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WHY MEN DO NOT BELIEVE; 



OR, THE 



Principal Causes of Infidelity. 



Why Men do not Believe; 



OR, THE 



PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF INFIDELITY. 



BY 

y 

N. ! J. LAFORET, 

PRELATE PROTONOTARY APOST. AD INSTAR PARTICIPANTIUM, RECTOR OP 
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF LOUVUN. 




NEW YORK: 
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY, 

126 Nassau Street. 



1869. 

t 



,\>5 



John A. Gray & Green, 

Printers, 
x6 and iS Jacob Street, New-York. 



INTRODUCTION 

TO THE 

<£tt0lis!) ©tanslatum 

OF 

" POURQUOI L'ON NE CROITPAS." 




T will doubtless be asked why this pamphlet 
&i| has been singled out from among the nume- 



rous productions of Catholic apologists, and 
presented to the public in an English dress. 
The numerous and highly self-satisfied class of ob- 
structives will not fail to question the opportunity and 
necessity of such a publication. But we are fain to be- 
lieve that its very subject-matter, as indicated in the title, 
will be an ample justification of our choice to all reflect- 
ing minds capable of discerning and appreciating the 
tendencies of contemporary thought. The nature and 
drift of these tendencies can no longer be a matter of 
mere opinion with those who dare to look facts in the 
face. The most undeniable characteristic of the age in 
which we live, even in this country which owes so much 
to the conservative common-sense instincts of the Eng- 
lish mind, is scepticism, unbelief, not only in the exclu- 
sive claims of this or that form of positive and dogma- 
tic Christianity, but in any supernatural communication 



vi Introduction. 

whatever of God to man. We hear on every side the 
divorce of modern educated thought from belief in the 
supernatural order proclaimed with a portentous unani- 
mity, so much the more noteworthy as the feelings elicit- 
ed by this acknowledgment are divergent. By some, this 
movement of the age is hailed as the dawn of an epoch 
of universal enlightenment ; as the supreme effort of the 
human mind to shake off the trammels of its long infan- 
cy ; while to others it harbinges a storm which will work 
sad havoc in those institutions hitherto regarded as es- 
sential to the well-being and permanence of society. 
Thus the problem handled in the following pages by the 
light of the data of history and psychological observa- 
tion is one which may well claim the attention of 
thoughtful minds. But, further, many of our brethren 
in the faith whose lot is cast in English-speaking com- 
munities, must have felt at times the need of an impar- 
tial and intelligent answer to the question which heads 
these pages — " Why Men do not Believe." They look 
around them and see men whose conscientious earnest- 
ness and estimable qualities of mind and heart they freely 
acknowledge, banded together in frenzied hate, or su- 
percilious contempt of those principles and institutions 
which claim, by so many titles, the allegiance of their 
reason and deepest feelings ; and their distressed piety, 
and, mayhap, their tottering faith, demand, " How can 
such things be ?" Without ascribing to the author the 
merit he himself repudiates, of having exhausted a prob- 
lem which requires for its full solution an insight, not 
only into the shortcomings and imperfections of pure- 
ly mental processes, but into the dark and impenetrable 
depths of the human heart and conscience, we may safe- 
ly promise those who will devote a few leisure hours to 



Introduction. vii 

this essay an intellectual treat. The position of the 
author, who for many years was Professor of the The- 
ological Faculty of the time-honored Catholic Universi- 
ty of Louvain, his clear-headed accuracy, his candor and 
liberality, the conspicuous absence from these pages of 
any bitterness of feeling, the judicial calm wherewith 
he handles topics so well fitted by their associations and 
actuality to disturb it, are a sufficient earnest of his com- 
petency to deal with this question, and claim for him 
the attention of all thoughtful, fair-minded men of every 
school or party. The rapid and alarming advance of 
Rationalism in the high places of the Established 
Church, and in the national universities, heretofore the 
homes of orthodox teaching, dispense us from com- 
menting on the relation indicated by the writer between 
the religious movement of the sixteenth century and that 
of our day. Public facts, unlike theories, though never 
so logically plausible, may not be ignored, nor will we 
weaken their witness to the views set forth by the 
learned professor by reflections on current events, 
which sufficiently tell their own tale. We conclude by 
joining with the author in the pious hope that this trans- 
lation may be no less successful than the original it re- 
produces, in strengthening the convictions of those who 
believe, and in enabling such as have gone astray to 
retrace their steps to the Temple of Truth, whose Found- 
er and Builder is God made manifest in the flesh. 

X. Y. Z. 



PREFACE. 




T is useless to deny the fact that in Christian 
communities many men are to be found who 
no longer believe in Christianity. Many 
even, not content with rejecting the religion 
of Jesus Christ, go on to deny God; or if they do not 
deny him in express terms, their idea of him is radically 
false, and they seek to place upon the altar of the living 
God, the Creator of heaven and earth, a philosophical 
idol, ten thousand times more vain than the idols of 
wood and stone to which pagan nations offered incense. 
Whence comes this infidelity ? According to those who 
pride themselves on being philosophers or critics, the 
denial of Christianity, or even of a personal and living 
God, is dictated by science and reason ; it is the natural 
and legitimate fruit of intellectual progress ; rationalists, 
spiritualists, materialists, atheists, pantheists, sceptics 
of every kind, all alike appeal to science and reason to 
justify their disbelief or their doubts in the eyes of the 
public, and even apparently to their own conscience. 
I willingly bear this testimony to learned unbelievers of 
every shade, that they can shelter their infidelity under 
the finest and noblest pretexts. I have no intention 
here to examine or discuss those scientific and philo- 
sophical pretexts which they call decisive and unanswer* 



x Preface. 

able reasons. This I have done elsewhere,* and Catho- 
lic writers continue to do so daily with the authority 
which belongs to true learning. I am now going to at- 
tempt another method. 

I have often reflected, sometimes with wonder, always 
with sadness, on the phenomenon of infidelity in the 
midst of the light of Christianity. I have frequently 
asked myself, in the sincerity of my heart, why so many 
men — many of whom are noble-minded, serious, learned 
— reject the teaching of the Catholic Church — the organ 
and representative of our Lord Jesus Christ upon earth 
— why certain minds, rather than submit to the authority 
of the Church, will descend to a total denial of the moral 
and religious order, and even to universal doubt. In 
this fact there is certainly matter for a psychological 
and moral study of high importance and melancholy in- 
terest. I know very well that in the eyes of infidels 
this fact appears the simplest and most natural thing in 
the world ; I know that they affect to place their infideli- 
ty under the direct and exclusive patronage of science 
and philosophy ; but I am convinced that science and 
philosophy are in no way interested in the hostile or in- 
different attitude which they assume toward the Chris- 
tian faith. Christians have always possessed, and still, 
thank God, possess, as large a measure of science and 
philosophy as infidels. Infidelity depends on other 
causes. What these causes are I propose now to make 
the object of my inquiry. I cannot hope to bring to 
light all the real causes of infidelity ; there are some 
which necessarily escape the eye of the observer, how- 



* In a work entitled Les Dogmes Catholigues, ejcj>os£s, frouv'es et 
vengh des attagues de Vherhie et de V incredulite. 



Preface. xl 

ever attentive ne may be ; there are mysteries in the 
depths of the human soul which the eye of God alone 
can penetrate. But it is easy for any one who has had 
an opportunity of closely observing believers and unbe- 
lievers, and of studying their history, to recognize the 
principal and ordinary causes of infidelity. 

This work will be divided into two parts, one histori- 
cal, the other critical. In the first part, after a few words 
on the preaching of Jesus Christ, and the opposite effects 
produced by it, we shall mark, by a few examples, the 
principal phases of the twofold history of the Christian 
faith, and of unbelief in the bosom of Christianity; this 
history will afford us valuable lessons ; it will show us 
how men become, how they remain, and how they cease 
to be Christians. We shall see, by the experience of 
eighteen centuries of the human mind, whether the 
source of infidelity can possibly be the development of 
reason, and the progress of intelligence. In the second 
part, relying on the lessons of history and on psycho- 
logical and moral observation, we shall seek to unfold 
the real causes of religious unbelief. We shall begin 
by defining the nature of faith, and the nature of infideli- 
ty ; we shall then analyze the principal forms of contem- 
porary infidelity, and we shall seek to distinguish the 
diverse and often complex conditions of the soul, to 
which they attach themselves, or by which they are pro- 
duced. 

We trust that God will make use of these pages, hum- 
ble though they be, to confirm some souls in the happy 
possession of the Faith, and to rescue others from the 
corroding bitterness of doubt, or from the gloomy, icy 
void of unbelief, leading them back to the bright and 
sweet repose which Christian faith alone can give. 

Lou vain, January i, 1864. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 




HIS book has already produced consoling 
fruits ; God has used it as his instrument 
to bring back many wandering souls to 
Christian Faith and practice. 
The Sovereign Pontiff had foretold this result in a 
letter addressed to the author a few weeks after the pub- 
lication of this work. We give a translation of this let- 
ter, which was published by the Revue Catholique of 
Louvain in the May number of 1864 : 

LETTER OF THE SOVEREIGN PONTIFF. 

Illustrious and Reverend Sir : 

To the more considerable works which you have al- 
ready published, you have added one which, though 
small in size, will, as its title promises, prove of the 
greatest utility. For, as in the art of healing the body 
its diseases are treated with the greatest ease and secu- 
rity when their true cause is known, so may the mala- 
dies of the soul be best and most effectually resisted and 
cured when their origin has been ascertained. As the 
plague of infidelity, which is the principal evil of our 
day, proceeds either from corruption of heart, or from 
the languor of religious feeling, or from the madness of 



xiv Preface to the Second Edition. 

pride, to discover such causes and to bring them to light, 
by tearing from them the veil under which they disguise 
their shameful deformity, will assuredly be a powerful 
aid to the minds of men to reject these errors, and to 
give them also a free access to the truth. Therefore 
our most Holy Father, Pope Pius IX., although the num- 
berless cares which press upon him have not yet per- 
mitted him to read the book which you have presented 
to him, especially approves its design, and has charged 
me to return to you his thanks, and to assure you 
from him that he foresees most abundant fruit from the 
labor which you have undertaken, and, as a pledge of 
that success, to convey to you his Apostolic Benedic- 
tion, which he gives you with the tenderest affection. 
Having had the pleasure of fulfilling this agreeable 
task, I offer you also the expression of my particular 
respect and esteem, and pray God to bestow all his 
favors upon you. 

Your most humble and devoted servant, 

Franciscus Mercurelli, 

Rome, April 16, 1864. (Latin Secretary to His Holiness.) 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PART I. 

PAGE 

Chap. I. — The preaching of Jesus Christ — Some believe our 
Lord's words, others reject them — Whence arises 
this difference of attitude and conduct 17 

Chap. II. — The manner in which the Christian Faith took posses- 
sion of the world — An example of the conversion of 
learned men and philosophers — St. Justin .... 26 

Chap. III. — Decisive triumph of Christianity in the Roman world- 
End of the persecutions — Constellation of great men 
in the bosom of the Church of the fourth century . . 44 

Chap. IV. — St. Augustine — His unbelief and his return to the 

Faith 49 

§ 1. — How Augustine loses the Faith — He rapidly descends 
all the steps of unbelief— He falls into materialism 
and scepticism 50 

§ 11. — Augustine's return to the Faith — He passes through an 

intellectual and moral crisis before his conversion . 59 

Chap. V. — The Christian Faith of the Middle Ages — It is para- 
mount in society and governs men of high intellect as 
well as the common people — Was this a blind Faith? 72 

Chap. VI. — Protestantism and reason 87 

§ 1. — Primitive Protestantism — Age of Leo X. — The real doc- 
trines of Luther and his accomplices — Denial of rea- 
son and liberty — War declared against science — Im- 
mediate effects of these doctrines ....... 90 

§ 11. — The negative principle of Protestantism, or the rejection 
of authority in matters of religion — Fanaticism and 
rationalism the twofold fruit of this principle . . . 105 



xvi Contents, 



PAGE 

Chap. VII. — Modern infidelity — Infidelity prevails first in England, 
afterward in France a»d Germany — Poverty of the 
infidel philosophy of the eighteenth century — Theolo- 
gical infidelity in Germany in 

Chap. VIII. — The principal forms of contemporary infidelity — Mate- 
rialism — Pantheism — Sophistry and scepticism — Spir- 
itual rationalism . . 124 



PART II. 

Chap. I.— What Faith is 139 

Chap. II. — Infidelity: In what it consists 157 

Chap. III. — It is impossible to attribute the infidelity of the present 
day to the progress of reason and science — Nume- 
rous conversions among learned men — Augustin 
Thierry and Maine de Biran 163 

Chap. IV. — Real causes of infidelity — First cause : Ignorance of re- 
ligion ... .181 

Chap. V. — Causes of religious ignorance — It is often voluntary, cul- 
pable ignorance — Levity and moral indifference of 
most infidels . . . 192 

Chap. VI. — Materialism — On what it rests — The soul materialized — 
How the soul arrives at this state, and what moral 
treatment must be followed to raise it from this degra- 
dation 200 

Chap. VII. — Scepticism — In what it consists — Different causes of 

scepticism . . .211 

Chap. VIII. — Corruption of the understanding— Sophistry and its vic- 
tims 226 

Chap. IX. — Unbelievers who admit the fundamental principles of na- 
tural religion — Causes of their unbelief . . . . . 232 

Chap. X. — Recapitulation of the causes of infidelity — How a young 

man may become an infidel 243 



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Why Men do not Believe ; 

OR, THE 

PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF INFIDELITY. 



PART I. 



CHAPTER I. 

The preaching of Jesus Christ — Some believe our 
Lord's words , others reject them — Whence arises 
this difference of attitude and conduct. 

HE parable of Lazarus and the rich man, 
recorded by St. Luke, contains a passage 
which, at the first glance, claims especial 
attention. A rich voluptuary, without 
compassion for the sufferings of the poor, dies, and 
is condemned to the torments of hell ; whilst Laza- 
rus, who had lived in extreme poverty and afflic- 
tion, is carried by Angels to the bosom of Abra- 
ham, the father of the faithful. The rich man, 
seeing himself hopelessly lost, implores Abraham 
to send Lazarus upon earth, to enlighten and un- 




1 8 Why Men do not Believe, or 

deceive his brethren, who, like himself, were living 
in opulence and preparing for themselves a simi- 
lar eternity of woe. Abraham thus answers this 
unhappy victim of wealth : " Your brethren have 
Moses and the Prophets ; let them hear them." 
"No, father Abraham," replies this miserable re- 
probate ; " but if one went to them from the dead, 
they will do penance." Abraham said unto him, 
"If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, nei- 
ther will they believe if one rise again from the 
dead."* The history of the preaching of the Gos- 
pel, the whole history of Christianity, bears unan- 
swerable testimony to the profound truth of the 
judgment which our Lord puts into the mouth 
of Abraham. People are apt to imagine that a 
striking miracle, performed under such circumstan- 
ces as ought to banish doubt from any reasonable 
mind, must overcome opposition and silence con- 
tradiction. But this is a grave error which experi- 
ence condemns. The majority of men who, know- 
ing Jesus Christ and his Church, believe not, 
would not believe more readily though one went 
to them from the dead. This assertion admits of 
abundant proof. 

At the commencement of our Lord's preaching 
St. John the Baptist sent two of his disciples to ask 
if he were the Messiah whom the world was look- 
ing for, and Jesus answered them : " Go and relate to 

* St. Luke xvl. 19-31. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 19 

John what you have heard and seen : the blind see, 
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf 
hear, the dead rise again, the poor have the Gospel 
preached to them. And blessed is he that shall not 
be scandalized in me,"* Such were the wonders 
daily performed by Jesus Christ ; each of his steps 
was, so to speak, marked by a miracle ; he exer- 
cised absolute sovereignty over all nature; nothing 
resisted his voice ; he called forth the dead from 
the grave with the same ease with which he gave 
sight to the blind or calmed the angry w r aves. His 
doctrine, his life, his moral character, were equal 
to his power. Never man spake as he did. His 
lessons infinitely surpassed those of all the wise men 
who had preceded him ; and men asked in amaze- 
ment whence came this sublime wisdom to a man 
who had not followed the teaching of any master. 
What life was ever to be compared to his in dignity, 
in moral grandeur, in modesty, goodness, unselfish- 
ness, in devotion to duty ! He presented the ideal 
of moral perfection to the eyes of all men. 

Such is Jesus Christ as the Gospel narrative shows 
him to us, such as he revealed himself to the Jews 
when he presented himself to them as the expected 
Messiah, as the only Son of God, as the Word made 
flesh for the salvation of men. 

And how was he received ? What effect did this 
threefold and incomparable miracle of the power, 
the doctrine, and the life of Jesus produce upon the 

* St. Matthew xi. 4-7. 



20 Why Men do not Believe, or 

Jews ? We have just heard these astounding words 
uttered by his own lips to the disciples of John : 
"Blessed is he that shall not be scandalized in 
me." And in fact, he was and still remains a sub- 
ject of scandal to the greater part of mankind. 
His contemporaries who saw and heard him were 
divided into two or three different categories with 
regard to him : some believed in him, others were 
indifferent and appeared to take no heed either of 
his works or his person ; many pursued him with 
implacable hatred. What happened after the rais- 
ing of Lazarus ? That was a glorious miracle, 
manifestly attesting divine power. It was a mira- 
cle performed before the eyes of a crowd of per- 
sons who had flocked to the tomb of Lazarus. 
They knew that he had been dead four days ; 
they supposed that his body already showed symp- 
toms of decay f and yet, at the command of 
Jesus, "Lazarus, come forth," t he that had been 
dead rose immediately from the grave and appeared 
full of life. Now listen to the continuation of the 
Gospel narrative : " Many, therefore, of the Jews 
who were come to Mary and Martha, and had seen 
the things that Jesus did, believed in him. But 
some of them went to the Pharisees, and told them 
the things that Jesus had done. The chief priests, 

* " Domine, jam fcetet, quatriduanus est enim." — Joan. xi. 39. 

t " Voce magna damavit : Lazare, veni foras. Et statim prodiit qui 
fuerat mortuus, ligatus pedes et manus institis, et facies illius sudario erat 
ligata. Dixit eis Jesus: solvite eum, et sinite ablre." — Ibid. 43-44. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 21 

therefore, and the Pharisees gathered a council, 
and said : What do we, for this man doeth many 
miracles ? If we let him alone so, all will believe 
in him, and the Romans will come and take away 
our place and nation. " # The chief of the council, 
the high priest Caiphas, gave advice that Jesus 
should be sacrificed for the safety of the people. 
This advice was adopted by his colleagues, and 
from that moment the elders of the nation sought 
to put him to death who had restored Lazarus to 
life. Nor was that sufficient. Lazarus had be- 
come the object of universal curiosity, and afford- 
ed embarrassing proof of the Almighty Power of 
Jesus. The chief priests, therefore, determined to 
put Lazarus also to death.f 

Thus did men who were exclusively devoted to 
material interests receive such a miracle as the 
raising the dead to life. And the same story 
will be repeated again and again in the course 
of the preaching of Christianity. To induce men 
to believe it is not enough for the light to shine be- 
fore their eyes ; before all things they must have a 
sincere and constant intention to keep their eyes 
open and to turn them in the direction of the light. 
The Gospel affords several instances of this moral 
phenomenon, which, moreover, all of us may ob- 
serve in different degrees, both in ourselves and in 

* Joan. xi. 45-49. 

t " Cogitaverunt autem principes sacerdotum, ut et Lazarum interfice- 
rent : quia multi propter ilium abibant ex Judasis, et credebant in Jesum." 
— Joan. xii. 10, 11. 



22 Why Men do not' Believe, or 

those around us. The understanding does not act 
alone ; it is in great measure under the dominion 
of the will, which directs it and fixes its attention 
on those objects which are pleasing to itself. The 
truth of this main point of psychology, especially of 
moral and religious psychology, will become more 
evident as we proceed. 

Among the eye-witnesses of the raising of Laza- 
rus, some beheld in this miracle a proof of the di- 
vinity of Jesus Christ; but what of the rest? Many 
of these men, indifferent to all morality and in- 
fluenced only by their levity or perhaps their cu- 
pidity, hastened to report the fact to the Pharisees, 
whom they knew to be the enemies of our Lord. 
It was impossible to deny the miracle, but they 
shut their eyes to the religious consequences which 
flowed from it ; they sought to turn it to their own 
profit or to make use of it as an instrument of 
their vengeance. 

The sacred historian relates, in another part of 
the Gospel, that the Pharisees, having seen Jesus 
cure a man who had a withered hand, immediately 
resolved on his destruction.* Everything which 
our Lord did irritated them ; the more miracles 
he performed, the more proofs of his divinity 
he gave, the more was their hatred kindled 
against him, the more did their fury rage, the 
more eagerly did they seek to make away with 
him. 

* Matt. xii. 13, 14. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 23 

We meet with another class of persons in the Gos- 
pel j men who did not hate Jesus Christ like the 
Pharisees, but who still did not believe in him ; 
men who held aloof, some from fear of compromis- 
ing themselves, others from levity of mind and in- 
difference on matters of religion. Pilate affords us 
a memorable example of this culpable levity and this 
fatal indifference with regard to all that is of supreme 
importance to man. We are all familiar with the 
examination which our Lord underwent at the hands 
of this wretched judge, whose name has become a 
by-word for prevaricating cowardice, before he was 
delivered to the Jews, who clamored for his death. 
The Divine Victim, desirous to raise the soul of his 
judge above the paltry occupations and interests of 
a day, said to him, in the course of this examination, 
" I came into the world that I should give testimo- 
ny to the truth ; every one that is of the truth heareth 
my voice. And Pilate said to him : What is truth?" 
This question of surpassing interest was directly 
suggested by our Lord's language, and was about to 
be answered by that infallible Teacher, but Pilate 
did not wait for the answer. Scarcely had he put 
the question before he left the judgment-hall to 
seek the accusers of Jesus, and thought no more of 
inquiring for the truth.* Here is the type of exces- 
sive levity. What is truth ? Men know not, and 
they do not care to know. For Pilate, the truth 

* " Dicit eiPilatus : Quid est Veritas? Et cum hoc dixisset, iterum ex- 
ivit ad Judaeos." — Joan, xviii. 38. 



24 Why Men do not Believe, or 

was his rank as governor ; all that he feared was to 
compromise his position. He saw only material 
interests in life ; riches and glcry absorbed all his 
thoughts ; the moral world was closed to him. How 
should such men as he was believe in the preaching 
of Jesus Christ? 

Our Saviour has himself described several of the 
moral causes which hindered many of his contem- 
poraries from believing in him. Pride, injustice, 
corruption of manners, levity of mind, these, accord- 
ing to the testimony of the Son of God, are the chief 
moral obstacles which close the soul against the en- 
trance of his word. " How can you believe, " said 
he to the proud Pharisees, "who receive glory one 
from another, and the glory which is from God alone 
you do not seek?" # And elsewhere: "Light is 
come into the world, and men loved darkness rather 
than light, for their deeds were evil. For every one 
that doth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to 
the light, that his works may not be reproved ?"f 
Are not these the chief moral causes of religious in- 
fidelity in every age? Jesus Christ pointed out to 
the Jews, who refused to receive his doctrine, that 
the root of unbelief is in the will rather than in the 
understanding : " You will not come to me," said he 
to them.$ He was moved by the disdainful and 
hostile attitude of the chief priests in the presence 
of the wonderful miracles which he daily wrought, 
to cry out to God, Father: "I confess to thee, O 

* Joan. v. 44. t Joan. iii. 19, 20. % Joan. v. 40. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 25 

Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou 
hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, 
and hath revealed them to little ones." # The 
Word by whom the world was made voluntarily an- 
nihilated himself, as St. Paul says, in order to restore 
man ruined through pride : humility is the condition 
of belief in this God and Saviour. 

Again, Our Lord, when explaining the parable of 
the sower, taught that the cares and riches and 
pleasures of this life are thorns which too often 
choke the seed of faith. f 

Such are the lessons which the teaching of Jesus 
Christ presents to us on the twofold question of faith 
and unbelief. These lessons, which call for the con- 
sideration of every reflecting mind, are confirmed 
by the whole subsequent history of Christianity. 

* Matt. xi. 25. t Luc. viii. 14. 



26 Why Mm do not Believe, or 



CHAPTER II. 

The manner in which the Christian Faith took pos- 
sesstion of the world — An example of the conver- 
sion of learned men and philosophers — St. Justin. 




T is not intended to give even a brief out- 
line of the history of the triumph of 



Christian teaching. I will only give one 
example to show the manner in which 
the new faith took possession of the loftiest intellects 
of the pagan world. 

We know how the mass of pagan society receiv- 
ed the preachers of the Gospel. That society had 
become a very sink of corruption, and it defended 
itself with a kind of frenzy against the moral inva- 
sion which attacked all that it loved, adored, and 
idolized. For three centuries the blood of the dis- 
ciples of Jesus Christ flowed almost without inter- 
mission. We can with difficulty understand the 
cruelty manifested toward them by the masters 
of the Roman world. 

The era of public persecutions began with Nero. 
Tacitus, who gives the history of the first persecu- 
tion, reveals in his narrative the horror with which 
the new religion was regarded by his fellow-coun- 
trymen. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 27 

A considerable part of Rome had been destroyed 
by fire, and public rumor attributed the conflagra- 
tion to the orders of Nero. " To put a stop to 
these reports/' says Tacitus, " the Emperor sought 
out criminals — miserable wretches who were held 
in abhorrence for their crimes, commonly called 
Christians, and exposed them to the most cruel tor- 
ments. Christ, from whom they took their name, 
had suffered under the Procurator, Pontius Pilate, # 
in the reign of Tiberius, and his death had re- 
pressed for the time this execrable superstition. 
But the torrent soon broke forth anew, not only in 
Judea, where it arose, but in Rome itself, the cen- 
tre where all disasters and crimes meet at last and 
assume increased dimension. Those who openly 
avowed themselves Christians were first seized, and 
afterward, on their deposition, vast multitudes 
were convicted not so much of the crime of setting 
fire to Rome as of hatred of the whole human 
race.f Derision was added to their torments ; 
some were enveloped in the skins of wild beasts 
and thrown to dogs to be devoured ; some were 
crucified ;t the bodies of others were covered with 
pitch and they were made to serve as torches to 
give light at night. Nero gave up his own gardens 

* " Auctor nominis ejus Christus, Tiberio imperitante, per procuratorem 
Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat." 

+ " Igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur ; deinde indicio eorum multi- 
tude) ingens, haud perinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis 
convicti sunt." 

t St. Peter, the first Pope, was crucified. 



28 Why Men do not Believe, or 

for the spectacle, and at the same time opened the 
games of the circus where the emperor mingled 
with the people dressed as a charioteer, or taking 
post in the chariot races." # 

Thus did the Master of the world understand 
the dignity of a sovereign ; thus far did a society 
without compassion carry its contempt- for human 
life and its hatred of Christianity. 

Tacitus condemns Christians on public report \ 
he knew nothing of them. One word of his, how- 
ever, describes admirably the radical opposition be- 
tween paganism and Christianity : This immense 
multitude, he says, was convicted, not so much of 
having set fire to Rome as of hatred of the human 
race. Tacitus shows clearly enough that he was 
convinced of the innocence of the Christians of 
the conflagration of Rome ; but that they were con- 
victed of hatred of the human race is profoundly 
true, though in a very different sense from that in 
tended by the Roman historian. The disciples of 
a God made man through love of men could not 
hate men ; but they did hate with a burning hatred 
all that was idolized by the foolish and corrupt hu- 
man race of whom Tacitus speaks, and they were 
therefore necessarily looked upon as its mortal and 
irreconcilable enemies. The world owes its renova- 
tion and refreshment to this generous hatred of 
the religious and social ideas, the manners and cus- 
toms, of a society which was rotten to the core, 

* A una?, lib. xv. n, xliv. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 29 

The new Religion, born of the sacrifice of the 
Cross and founded by the Blood of Jesus Christ, 
could not be arrested in its course by the fury of 
pagan rulers. The Blood of Martyrs became 
the seed of Christianity. Within two centuries of 
the death of Jesus Christ, Tertullian, who had 
himself abjured the superstitions of heathenism 
and embraced the Christian Faith, 5 * feared not to 
write thus to the Roman proconsuls: " We are but 
of yesterday, and we already fill all that belonged 
to you ; towns, islands, fortresses, even camps, the 
troops, whether tribunes or decurions, the palace, 
the senate, the forum : we leave you nothing but 
your temples."! 

Christianity, in the first years of the preaching 
of the Gospel, was recruited principally from the 
ranks of the people, though even in the time of the 
Apostles a certain number of rich and learned men 
were received into its bosom. It had pleased 
the Divine Restorer of humanity to call, in the first 
instance, the little ones and the poor, the despised 
of a carnal world which adored only fortune and 
power. But by degrees, illustrious sages, whom the 
pride of knowledge had failed to intoxicate, came 
to swell the humble beginnings of Christian society. 

Souls of a higher order, who were in some degree 
inflamed with the love of what was true and excel- 
lent, found themselves in a strange as well as pain- 

* " De vestris fuimus ; fiunr, non nascuntur Christiani." — Afiol. 
xviii. t Apol. xxxvii. 9, 



30 Why Men do not Believe, or 

ful position amid the superstitions of idolatry. All 
pagan religions had two serious defects ; they were 
neither reasonable nor moral. They were not re- 
ligions in the higher acceptation of the word. And 
yet the human soul, if not wholly debased by vice, 
is naturally religious, and the mind turns instinct- 
ively to regions above the world of sense. The 
masses, who are not in the habit of reasoning, and 
in whom feeling and imagination preponderate, 
might perchance find sufficient aliment in the exter- 
nal practices and numerous festivals consecrated by 
mythology. Besides which they lived in a state of 
moral ignorance bordering on stupidity. But how 
could men of cultivated minds, in whom the moral 
sense was not totally extinct, accept the tissue of 
absurd and often immoral fables on which the 
religious worship of Greece and Rome rested ? I 
have read most of the documents which antiquity 
has bequeathed to us touching Grecian philoso- 
phy, and I do not know of two philosophers who 
seriously believed the popular religion. It was not 
possible. They rarely had the courage to condemn 
if, and they despised the lower orders too much to 
seek to free their minds from the monstrous errors 
by which they were enslaved, especially as such a 
course would have been attended with danger ; but, 
as regards themselves, they did not believe the 
greater part (I dare not say all) of these extrava- 
gant fictions. They were well aware that they 
must not seek for truth in the popular creed : they 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 3 1 

sought it in ancient traditions, in the teaching of 
men who had been most renowned for wisdom, in 
their own meditations ; but if they were able to 
raise themselves above the grosser errors of the 
multitude, they could never attain to the pure and 
serene profession of truth, with regard to God, 
with regard to man, with regard to the relations 
between God and man ; and many of them even 
fell into errors worse than the popular superstitions. 
How sad was the moral condition of Xenophon, 
of Pythagoras, Philolaus, An axagoras, of Socrates, 
Plato, Aristides, of Zeno of Cittium, of all those 
noble and obstinate seekers after truth who have 
left so honorable a trace in the history of philoso- 
phy ! 

Christianity is the only religion which has ever 
united in a common faith, equally clear, complete, 
and steadfast, the common people and philosophers, 
the ignorant and the learned. It affords a singular 
phenomenon in the annals of humanity. 

As early as the second century of the Christian 
era a great number of eminent and cultivated minds 
had embraced the Faith of Jesus Christ. One of 
them, the philosopher Justin, has left us an account 
of his conversion. The narrative is singularly 
instructive. I will relate the principal facts, and we 
shall learn, by one memorable example, the way by 
which philosophers arrived at the True Faith. 

Justin made a profession of philosophy, and con- 
f-'nued to wear the philosopher's mantle even after 



32 Why Men do not Believe, or 

his conversion to Christianity. He was born in 
Samaria either at the end of the first or beginning 
of the second century. He studied Greek litera 
ture with ardor, and his writings attest that he had 
attained a considerable degree of mental cultiva- 
tion. The gross doctrines of paganism could not 
satisfy a serious and elevated mind such as his. 
The thirst after truth devoured his soul. He was 
prepared to seek it at all risks, and to follow it 
when found. He tried, in the first instance, the 
schools of philosophy in highest repute ; he applied 
by turns to stoicism, to peripateticism, to pythago- 
rism, to platonism : " Philosophy," said this noble 
mind, " is truly a great treasure, of great price in the 
eyes of God to whom it leads, and in whose sight it 
alone can make us acceptable. " # Justin flattered 
himself that he should be able to obtain from the 
most famous masters of philosophy clear answers 
to those religious questions, which every soul not 
absolutely debased necessarily asks itself. He 
went from error to error. For one moment, how- 
ever, he thought he had met with the object of his 
search. The philosophy of Plato, the purest and 
most elevated of the pagan systems of philosophy, 
seemed at first sight destined to give full satisfac- 
tion to the religious cravings of his mind ; he was 
transported with joy at meeting with this beautiful 
system which promised to unveil before his eyes the 
realities of the world of intelligence. His pilgrim- 

* Dialogue with TryJ>ho, n. 2. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 33 

ages to the schools of Pythagoras, Aristotle, and 
Zeno had been futile. " I resolved," he says, " to 
confer with the followers of Plato who are held in 
high repute. One of their principal teachers had 
just arrived in our city. I put myself in communi- 
cation with him, and after long conversations I found 
myself daily making fresh progress. The knowledge 
of the world of intelligence transported me with joy : 
the theory of ideas gave wings to my understand- 
ing.* I fancied I had become learned in a short 
time, and flattered myself that I should soon arrive 
at the contemplation of God, which is the aim 
and end of Plato's philosophy."! 

But there are grave omissions and important 
errors in Plato's teaching. Justin was some time 
before he perceived them. As yet he was ignorant 
of the new doctrine whose light was beginning to 
dissipate the darkness in which the highest intel- 
lects vainly struggled. He knew that Christians 
existed, but he probably shared the disdainful and 
hostile sentiments of the intellectual men of his 
time toward them. Still he did not believe in the 
monstrous and infamous crimes which the world at 
large imputed to them, and to which Tacitus alludes 
in the passage quoted above. " I also," he says, 
" when I was attached to Platonism, had heard of 
the crimes imputed to Christians ; but when I saw 
them face death, and all that men are wont most to 

* A familiar expression of Plato, 
t Dialogue with Trypho> n. 2. 



34 Why Men do not Believe, or 

dread, without fear, I could not conceive it possible 
that they passed their lives in disorder and volup- 
tuousness. How was it possible to suppose that a 
man who was a lover of pleasure and intemperance, 
a slave to the flesh and worldly delights, should 
court death, which would deprive him of these 
goods ? Far from running to meet certain condem- 
nation, would he not, on the contrary, conceal him- 
self from the vigilance of the magistrates in order 
to enjoy the pleasures of life as long as possible ?"* 

Nothing could be simpler than this reasoning. 
The generous philosopher was struck by the con- 
stancy of the Martyrs ; and if he did nor yet ask 
himself whence came this heroism, his reason was 
at any rate free from the absurd prejudices which 
blinded the eyes of the multitude. Prejudice, next 
to the passions, is one of the greatest obstacles which 
the Christian Faith has encountered in every age. 
Let men once cast off prejudice and sincerely pur- 
sue the search after truth, and truth will not hide it- 
self from their eyes. It was not long before Justin 
became a Christian. He relates himself, in the 
opening of his dialogue with the Jew Trypho, how 
he became acquainted with and embraced Christi- 
anity. He quickly passed from the school of Plato 
to the school of Jesus Christ. 

It happened that one day, in order to be able to 
apply himself with greater freedom to the contem- 
plation of the world of intellect to which the Pla- 

* II. Apol. n. 12. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 35 

tonic philosophy had introduced him, he repaired 
to a solitary place near the sea-shore. Thither he 
was followed by an old man of venerable aspect, 
whose countenance bore the impression both of 
gravity and sweetness. Justin stopped and could 
not forbear expressing his astonishment at meeting 
any one in that solitude.^ " I did not expect," said 
he to the old man, " to meet any one here." " I am 
in trouble," replied the unknown, " about some of 
my friends who are travelling, and I came here to 
see if by chance they might be visible in some point 
of the horizon. But what brings you to this soli- 
tude ?" " As for me, I take a delight in these ram- 
bles, because, free from all distraction, I can here 
commune with myself at my ease; for solitude is 
eminently favorable to philosophy." " Ah ! you are 
one of those who love words without troubling your- 
self about actions or truth, and who neglect what is 
practical for the sake of vain speculations." Justin 
thus attacked began to speak in praise of philoso- 
phy, and to extol it as the necessary source of all 
moral dignity. " Does philosophy necessarily con- 
fer happiness ?" asked the old man. "Certainly; 
and philosophy alone can do so." " If nothing for- 
bids it, explain to me what philosophy is, and what 
is that happiness of which it is the source." "Phi- 
losophy," replied Justin, " is the science of being, 
and the knowledge of truth; happiness is the re- 

* Justin must have been at Ephesus or Alexandria. He lived for some 
time in these two cities. He afterward settled at Rome, where he founded 
a school. 



36 Why Men do not Believe, or 

ward of this science and of this wisdom." This is, 
in fact, the Platonic idea of philosophy, and it is a 
noble and generous idea; but it cannot be realized 
by the unassisted power of human reason. 

The confident disciple of Plato then went on to 
explain briefly to his companion what was the doc- 
trine of his master with regard to God and the soul 
of man. The old man, versed in the teaching of 
Jesus Christ, pointed out to the philosopher the 
weak points, the omissions, the manifest errors of 
this doctrine, remarkable though it be in many re- 
spects ; and he particularly insisted on the absurd- 
ity of the doctrine of the metempsychosis, which 
Jean Reynaud, Pierre Leroux, Laurent, and certain 
savants have endeavored to resuscitate in our days 
in the name of progress. Justin knew not how to 
answer ; all his philosophical illusions forsook him. 
His mind was in confusion, and not knowing how 
to calm it, he cried out in accents of despair, "To 
whom shall I go ; where is truth to be found if not 
in the teaching of these men who are the oracles of 
philosophy ?" 

Justin's companion, having clearly pointed out the 
insufficiency of philosophy, proceeded to reassure 
him, and introduced him to a far higher school than 
that of Plato : " At a distant period of our history, 
long before the time of those who pass for philoso- 
phers, there lived men who were blessed, just, be- 
loved of God ; they were inspired by the Holy 
Spirit, and foretold future events, which have been 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 37 

fulfilled in our days : they are called prophets. 
These men alone had knowledge of the truth, and 
they announced it to men without weakness or 
fear ; they were strangers to any thought of vain 
glory, and only taught what the Holy Spirit had 
given them to see and hear. Their writings still 
exist ; whoever reads them with faith will derive 
from them great profit, and will be enabled to un- 
derstand the beginning and end of things, and all 
that a philosopher ought to know. They do not pro- 
ceed by way of demonstration ; they are sincere 
witnesses of the truth, and above all demonstration : 
the accomplishment of what they announced com- 
pels us to believe their words. Besides, the miracles 
they performed placed their testimony above suspi- 
cion. They glorified God the Father, Creator of the 
universe, and announced to men his Son Jesus 
Christ, sent by him. As for you, before all things, 
pray that the gates of light may be opened before 
you j for no one can see and understand these things 
unless God and his Christ give him understand- 
ing. " # 

Prayer ! Philosophy knew nothing of this mode 
of arriving at the knowledge of the truth. The 
gates of faith — -faith which is the true moral and 
religious light — open of themselves to prayer \ for 
God is pleased to communicate himself to the hum 
ble, and prayer, being the acknowledgment of our 

* Dialogue with Trypho, n. 7. 



3 8 Why Men do not Believe, or 

insufficiency and poverty, is the expression of hu- 
mility. Justin soon experienced this. 

He continues thus : " When the old man had said 
these things and many more which I cannot relate 
here, he left me, recommending me to meditate on 
what I had heard. Since then I have not seen him. 
But my soul, inflamed with holy desire, longed ar- 
dently to become acquainted with the Prophets and 
those men who are the friends of Christ. Pass- 
ing over in my mind the conversation that had taken 
place, I found that this was the only certain and 
useful philosophy. Thus and for this reason I am 
a philosopher." Would that all might follow the 
same road, so as not to wander from the doctrine of 
the Saviour ; for this doctrine possesses a majesty 
calculated to strike those who have deviated from 
the right path, and those who meditate on it will 
find in it rest full of sweetness.^ Rest in a lumi- 
nous and immovable certainty ; this was the end 
which the restless, ardent soul of the philosopher 
pursued. The careful reading of the Holy Scrip- 
tures, and meditation on the doctrine of Jesus Christ, 
soon brought him to this happy end. Scarcely had 
he entered this divine school than he comprehended 
that there were safer and more perfect masters than 
Pythagoras and Plato. A new world was unveiled 
before his eyes. He saw that from the beginning 
God had spoken to men by a positive revelation ; 
that he had afterward created a nation expressly to 

* Dialogue uiih Trypho^ n. 3. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 39 

preserve, develop, and preach Revealed Truth, and 
to announce and prepare the world for universal re- 
demption ; that in the fulness of time he had sent 
his own Son, the Lord Jesus, to perfect man's educa- 
tion and to accomplish the great work of his regen- 
eration. What new and magnificent prospects for 
a mind thirsting after knowledge, and how insignifi- 
cant must the schools of Greece have appeared to 
him beside this grand school, visibly held and 
governed, not by a man of genius, but by the Word 
of God in Person ! 

We, who were born and have grown up in the 
full light of Christianity, can with difficulty picture 
to ourselves the effect which this sudden transition, 
from the schools of Grecian philosophers to the 
school of the Word made flesh, produced on pa- 
gans of pure and elevated character. It was lite- 
rally passing from the darkness of night to the light 
of clay. What deep, enthusiastic joy animates the 
meetings of these illustrious converts ! Charity 
kindled in their souls the fire of proselytism, and 
they ardently desired to bring all the unhappy vic- 
tims of error to participate in the ineffable delight 
which they found in the Christian Faith. What 
deep-seated happiness, what ardent proselytism, 
shine forth together in that eloquent passage with 
which Justin, now become the apologist of the 
Christian religion, closes his discourse to the 
Greeks : " Come, O Greeks ! and participate in a 



40 Why Men do not Believe, or 

wisdom that is incomparable !* Instructed by a 
Divine Word, you will become acquainted with a 
King who is not subject to corruption : with heroes 
who have not distinguished themselves from the 
rest of their fellows by their crimes. The Divine 
Word who is our head does not desire in us strength 
of body, nor beauty of form, nor nobility of birth; 
but a pure mind established in holiness, virtuous 
actions by which the world may discern what King 
we serve. It is by the Word that a secret virtue 
penetrates the soul. A celestial herald ! announc- 
ing peace to the soul convulsed by war ! Salutary 
messenger ! extinguishing the fire of the passions ! 
. . . Draw near then, O Greeks ! suffer your- 
selves to be instructed. Become such as I am, for 
I also have been as you now are. The Divine 
virtue of the doctrine and power of the Word 
triumphed over me. Like the skilful enchanter 
who draws from his lurking-place the serpent he 
would put to flight, the Word banishes sensual 
pleasures from the depths of the soul ; first covet- 
ousness, from which spring the evils most to be 
feared, enmities, dissensions, envy, jealousy, anger, 
and all that resembles them. Let covetousness 
once be drawn from the breast, and the soul recov- 
ers peace and security. All things necessarily re- 
turn to their place of origin and point of departure ; 
therefore, when the soul is delivered from the vices 

* . . . x a{ - (yopta dnapauL/./jjrco xolvcovr^aare. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 41 

which make war against it, it returns of its own 
accord to its Creator. " # 

The teaching of the Word made flesh worked at 
once a moral and intellectual revolution in the 
soul. It was, according to St. Paul's words, the 
renovation of the whole man, mwa creatura. 

The manner in which the philosopher Justin 
arrived at the Christian Faith must arrest the at- 
tention of the observer. From the moment that 
the true idea of God, as the Creator of the world 
and the beginning and last end of man, took pos- 
session of his mind, he was won over to Christian- 
ity. We gather this from the narrative of his con- 
version, and from the general bearing of his doc- 
trinal controversies against paganism. In spite of 
his wanderings among the many schools of philoso- 
phy, this noble intellect knew little of the nature of 
God and of his relations with the world ; and the 
knowledge of God being the true source of the 
knowledge of ourselves, it followed that he had lit- 
tle knowledge of man; the nature of man, his ori- 
gin and his end, and the path to be followed to at- 
tain that end, were so many enigmas of which the 
answer was hidden from him. Christian doctrine, 
by revealing to him the relations between God and 
finite creatures, gave him the key to all these pro- 
blems. How could he refuse to accept the witness 
of Christianity with regard to mysteries of an order 
above human reason, when the same teaching 

* Orat. ad Grescas, n. 5. 



42 Why Men do not Believe, or 

resolved so clearly and fully, and in a manner so 
conformable with reason, those important questions, 
the solution of which he had vainly sought in ail 
the schools of philosophy ? Besides, he compre- 
hended that God, being the Creator and Father 
of man, must himself have instructed man in 
that which it was of supreme importance for him to 
know, and must have established upon earth some 
authority commissioned to maintain and teach the 
True Religion. He had now met with this author- 
ity, and to it he owed the solution of those pro- 
blems which had hitherto perplexed him : how 
could he refuse to hear and follow its teaching ? 
Further, when a man attains the knowledge of 
God, when he believes in his infinite goodness and 
his love for men, there is nothing in Christianity, 
in spite of all its marvels, to astonish him. To the 
grateful and enraptured soul of the philosopher, the 
Christian Religion appeared the most glorious, and 
if I may so say, the most natural, manifestation of 
the love of God to man. 

St. Justin sealed his belief in the Christian Faith 
with his blood, about the year 168, after having 
gloriously defended it in writings which cannot be 
read even in our days without fervent religious 
feeling.* 

In the second century and in the beginning of 

* The Abbe Freppel, professor of sacred eloquence at the f/orborme, 
has recently published a very complete and valuable treatise on the life of 
St. Justin. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 43 

the third, we find many pagans distinguished by 
genius and learning following the example of the 
philosopher Justin, and bowing down their reason 
before the majesty of the Gospel. Three of them 
have left names of especial celebrity : Athenagoras, 
Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria. We do 
not know the details of the conversion of these 
illustrious men. From this time a great number 
of learned writers were to be found among Chris- 
tians. Besides those we have already named, it 
will suffice to mention Theophilus of Antioch, 
Melitus of Sardis, Saint Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, 
Pantenus the master of Clement and first teacher 
of the renowned Christian school of Alexandria, 
Origen, Saint Hippolytus of Porto, Minutius Felix, 
Saint Dionysius of Alexandria, and Saint Cyprian, 
Bishop of Carthage. Such men as these assured- 
ly did not believe blindly. Some of them have 
left remarkable works in defence of the Christian 
Faith. The writings of Origen on the Holy 
Scriptures still command the admiration of critics. 



44 Why Men do not Believe, or 



CHAPTER III. 

Decisive triumph of Christianity in the Roman world 
— End of persecution — Constellation of great men 
in the bosom of the Church of the fourth century. 

'jp Hft T BBs qjjHE era of the legal and public persecu- 
m£ £§1 ti° ns °f Christianity which Nero had 
|*p|j Km opened was closed by Diocletian, be- 

' fore its social and political importance 

was recognized. From Nero to Diocletian, Christi- 
anity had not ceased to extend its pacific conquests ; 
it had invaded the whole empire, and numbered a 
vast multitude of disciples of every class even in 
Rome itself; it had penetrated the highest ranks 
of society ; some of the noblest citizens of the 
empire sought refuge in its bosom. It had become, 
therefore, a serious matter, even on political grounds, 
to engage in a general persecution of the Christian 
Church. But Galerius Caesar, whose cruel nature 
thirsted for blood, and who was a prey to all the 
superstitions of paganism, urged Diocletian to pur- 
sue rigorous measures. The emperor made a long 
resistance, but at length, after having taken the ad- 
vice of a council of judges and of the heads of 
the army, after having consulted the Oracle of 
Apollo at Miletus, which declared that the pres- 
ence of Christians upon earth was the cause 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 45 

that only false answers were issued from the tripod, 
he resolved, in concert with Galerius, to annihilate 
Christianity. In the year 303, he published an 
edict, which is one of the saddest monuments of 
intolerance and cruelty : " All Christians, without 
exception, are to be stripped of their honors and 
dignity ; no rank, no position will serve as protec- 
tion against torture ; all persons are at liberty to 
bring actions against them, but they cannot bring 
an action against any one, however great the 
injustice of which they may have to complain ; 
churches are to be destroyed, ecclesiastical pro- 
perty confiscated, religious books burnt ; Christians 
are to be allowed no liberty and no voice in public 
matters. " # In the beginning of the year 304, the 
punishment of death was decreed against all who 
would not abjure Christianity, and from that mo- 
ment the blood of Christians flowed in torrents 
from one end of the empire to the other, with the 
exception of Gaul, which was governed by Constan- 
tius Chlorus. " It is impossible," says Dr. D61- 
linger, " to depict the atrocious emulation of the 
persecutors in the invention and application of infer- 
nal tortures ; the words of Lactantius are too weak 
to describe it when he says, ' A voice of groaning 
was heard over the whole earth, which from the 
east to the west (with the exception of Gaul) was 
devastated by the fury of three most ferocious 

* Euseb. Hist. Eccl. lib. viii. c. 2 ; and Lactant. De Mori. Perse cut. 
n. x'ii. Patrol, ed. Migne, t. vii. col. 214. 



46 Why Men do not Believe, or 

wild beasts — Diocletian, Maximianus, and Gale- 
rius.' " # The name of Diocletian has remained 
attached to this persecution, which lasted about 
seven years, and caused frightful carnage. The 
pagan rulers thought they had ruined the cause of 
the new religion for ever, and to perpetuate the 
memory of their triumph they caused medals to be 
struck, with inscriptions of this kind : " The 
name of Christian is destroyed, the Christian super- 
stition is everywhere abolished, and the worship 
of the gods propagated."! Fools that they were ; 
they knew not that the religion of the Cross had 
been born in blood ; they forgot the lesson which so 
many persecutions ought to have taught them, that 
the blood of Martyrs is the seed of Christians. At 
the very time that these blind representatives of a 
bloody power flattered themselves that they had 
stifled Christianity in blood, he who reigns in 
heaven was laughing at their shouts of triumph, 
was preparing their tomb, and weaving the crown 
which his justice, too long ignored, was about to 
place on the victorious head of Christianity, hence- 
forth to be recognized as the ruler of the empire 
of the world. 

In the year 313, Constantine and Licinius, who 
were the real heads of the empire, published at 
Milan that celebrated edict which, by placing Chris- 

* Origin of Christia?iity. — Lactant. t. i. p. 178, trans, of M. Leon 
Bore. 

t " Nomine Christianorum deleto, superstitione Christiana ubique de- 
leta, et cultu deorum propagate" 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 47 

tianityon a perfect equality with the pagan religion, 
gave it definitive freedom. The religion of Jesus 
Christ, thus set free, was able to show itself in 
the light of day ; and the pagans, who had just cele- 
brated its obsequies, were struck with amazement 
when they beheld the innumerable multitude which 
professed it. Paganism was vanquished ; its day 
was over. Julian the Apostate might attempt its 
restoration, but the only result was to cover it with 
ridicule in the eyes of all men, and to bury it for 
ever under universal contempt and execration. 

The fourth century is undoubtedly one of the 
most glorious periods in the history of the Church, 
especially with regard to science and learning. It 
is the great era of Christian literature. It was 
adorned by eminent men of all kinds ; St. Atha- 
nasius, Eusebius of Caesarea, St. Basil, St. Grego- 
ry Nazianzen, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Cyril of 
Jerusalem, Didymus and St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. 
Epiphanius, St. John Chrysostom, Lactantius, St. 
Hilary of Poitiers, St. Eusebius of Vercelli, St. Am- 
brose, St. Jerome, St. Augustine. These were all 
eminently gifted men, some of whom, with truly su- 
perior genius, penetrated the profounclest depths of 
the Christian Faith, and placed in a brilliant light 
the secret and marvellous harmonies of the religion 
of Jesus Christ. When we read their profound 
and luminous writings, we may well feel proud 
and happy to be partakers of their belief. How 
resplendent with light and Divine beauty does 



48 Why Men do not Believe, or 

Catholic Doctrine appear in the works of these im- 
mortal theologians ! How vast the powers of hu- 
man reason ! The chief mysteries in the natural 
and supernatural order of earth and heaven shine 
therein with mild, serene brightness. But we must 
not linger over this spectacle, consoling though it 
be amidst the sad attacks of men of our own day, 
who seem to fear that poor human reason must be 
lowered by seeking to draw light and heat from the 
clear, luminus focus of Faith. I must at once en- 
ter on the subject of St. Augustine's unbelief and 
ultimate return to the Faith. 




The Principal Causes of Infidelity, 49 



CHAPTER IV. 

St. Augustine — His unbelief and return to the Faith. 

S there any one who does not know that 
Augustine was a genius of the highest 
order, one of the most powerful intellects 
whom the world has ever produced ? Bos- 
suet read and re-read him continually, ever finding 
fresh light in his writings. To his inspiration we owe 
the most eminent theologians and Christian philoso- 
phers of the middle ages and of modern times. 
We could point out writers \w.10 are more correct, 
more elegant, more eloquent, than the Bishop of 
Hippo ; but we believe that in the annals of man- 
kind no intellect is to be met with superior to his. 
The experience of this man, as regards the ques- 
tion of unbelief and faith, is therefore worthy of 
particular attention. , 

By singular good fortune we possess a history 
of Augustine, written by himself, which gives us an 
intimate knowledge of his soul. His Confessions 
describe with great minuteness the twofold journey 
of this great soul, by which he descended into the 
darkness of infidelity and returned to the light of 
Faith. I know of no book more curious, more 
absorbing, more instructive, tlun this. I cannot 



50 Why Men do not Believe, or 

attempt to reproduce the simple and dramatic pic- 
ture of the wanderings and conversion of Augus- 
tine, but must content myself with pointing out 
some of its most characteristic features. 



SECTION I. 



How Augustine loses the Faith — He rapidly descends 
all the steps of unbelief— He falls into materialis?7i 
and scepticism. 

In Augustine's time, society was in great part 
Christian, but still mingled with paganism. The 
Bishop of Hippo was born at Tagaste, in the yeai 
384, of parents in the middle class. At the time 
of his birth his father was not a Christian, though 
he was converted afterward. But his mother, the 
future Saint Monica, had instructed him in the Faith 
of Jesus Christ from his tenderest years. " I then 
already believed," he says, " and my mother, and 
the whole household, except my father : yet did not 
he prevail over the power of my mother's piety in 
me, that as he did not yet believe, so neither should 
L"* However, the young Augustine had not re- 
ceived Baptism, he was only a Catechumen. 

* C*nf.Hb.\.c. 11 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 5 1 

The faith of the son of Monica was neither suffi- 
ciently earnest nor sufficiently enlightened to with- 
stand the whirlwind of the passions ; nor could it re- 
sist the poisonous action of a hostile or even indif- 
ferent school of teaching. Augustine's faith soon 
gave way; but still the name of Jesus Christ, which 
he had learned to venerate on his mother's knees, 
was always dear to his heart, even amidst his most 
grievous disorders. 3 * 

Augustine passed several years in the schools of 
Tagaste and Madaura, a neighboring city ; then he 
was sent to the capital of Africa to finish his studies. 

He tells us that his father, whose means were very 
moderate, was obliged to impose heavy sacrifices on 
himself, in order to enable his son to study under 
the famous masters of Carthage. t He was only 
sixteen when he arrived in that city. His soul was 
already a prey to sensual passions, and a residence 
in Carthage was not calculated to recall him to the 
austere performance of duty. He thought only of 
enjoyment; he knew no other pleasures than the 
gross and bitter pleasures of sense. " For within 
me was a famine of that inward food, thyself, my 
God ; yet through that famine I was not hungered : 
but was without all longing for incorruptible suste- 
nance, not because filled therewith, but the more 
empty, the more I loathed it. For this cause my 
soul was sickly and full of sores ; it miserably cast 

* Con/, lib. iii. c. 4. f Ibid. lib. 11. c. 2, 



52 Why Men do not Believe, or 

itself forth, desiring to be relieved by the touch of 
objects of sense. " # The students of Carthage were 
given up to all manner of disorders, and though 
Augustine was the slave of voluptuousness, he 
was better than many of his companions. Accord- 
ing to the testimony of Vincent the Rogatist, he 
always loved decency and good manners even in 
his irregularities.! At the beginning of his resi- 
dence at Carthage, the young student from Tagaste 
contracted a criminal intimacy with a woman which 
lasted fourteen years. 

But the disorders of the son of Monica did not 
interfere with his progress in study ; his quick in- 
telligence triumphed over every obstacle. " Those 
studies," he says, " which were accounted commend- 
able, had a view to excelling in the courts of litiga- 
tion ) the more bepraised, the craftier. Such is 
men's blindness, glorying even in their blindness. 
And now I was chief in the school of rhetoric, where- 
at I joyed proudly." $ 

The brilliant student of Tagaste soon became pro- 
fessor of rhetoric in the metropolis of Africa, and 
was no less successful as a master than he had been 
as a scholar. 

But what had become of Augustine's religious be- 
lief in the midst of this whirlwind of pleasure and 
of the vain plaudits of the world ? Where was the 
faith of his childhood ? That faith was dead • Au- 

* Conf. lib. iii. c. i. t Cf. Con/, lib. iii. c. 3. % Ibid. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 53 

gustine no longer believed the teaching of Christi- 
anity. His soul, it is true, preserved an affection 
ate respect for the name of Jesus Christ ; but this 
respect, which was the fruit of his early education, 
found no support in his understanding, and subsist- 
ed only as a vague, unexplained sentiment. With 
virtue and innocence the son of Monica lost also 
his faith. Every Christian idea was effaced from 
his mind, and he entertained the most incredible 
prejudices against the Creed of the Church. He 
attributed the most extravagant doctrines to Chris- 
tians. It was at this time he imagined that Chris- 
tianity taught that God was a material being, with 
a body similar to ours ! It is inexplicable how an 
intelligent man who had received a Christian edu- 
cation could seriously impute the grossest anthro- 
pomorphism to a religion which claims as one of its 
most glorious titles that it reestablished in the 
human soul the grand idea of the spirituality and 
infinity of God. The religious teaching which Au- 
gustine received in his childhood must have been 
strangely superficial. 

And with what had this poor, proud youth replac- 
ed the faith which had shone upon his cradle ? He 
had, alas ! descended to the lowest grade of intel- 
lectual misery. He had fallen into materialism, and 
into a doubly absurd form of materialism : into Man- 
icheism. We know that the Manichees believed in 
two coeternal principles, wholly independent and es- 
sentially opposed to one another — the good princi- 



54 Why Men do not Believe, or 

pie and the evil principle. They professed the most 
shameful extravagances. It was at Carthage that 
Augustine fell in with these strange masters, who 
spoke much of truth and science, and set forth their 
pretensions to unveil all mysteries ; and this noble 
genius, whose wings had been cut, as Plato speaks, 
by sensuality, allowed himself to be caught in their 
vulgar toils. " I fell among men," says he, " proud- 
ly doting, exceeding carnal, and prating, in whose 
mouths were the snares of the devil. . . . They 
cried out exceedingly, Truth, Truth, and spake much 
thereof to me, but the truth was not in them ; but 
they spake falsehood, not of thee only, O my God ! 
who truly art Truth, but even of those elements of 
this world, the work of thy hands." # . . . "Alas!" 
cries Augustine, after having recalled some of the 
errors of Manicheism, " by what steps was I brought 
down to the depths of hell ? Ah my God ! . . . I 
descended thither because I sought thee, not accord- 
ing to the understanding of the mind, wherein thou 
willedst that I should excel the beasts, but accord- 
ing to the sense of the flesh." f 

It is needless to follow Augustine in the picture 
he draws of the errors and unheard-of absurdities 
into which Manicheism had led him.f It is suffi- 
cient to remark that he consulted astrologers, and 
believed all the follies of judicial astrology. § Pas- 
cal says, " None so credulous as unbelievers /" and 

* Conf. lib. iii. c. 10. % Ibid. lib. iii. c. 6. 

t Ibid. § Ibid. lib. iv. c. 3. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 5 5 

nothing is more true. The whole history of infidel- 
ity for eighteen hundred years confirms this asser- 
tion. People reject, in the name of reason, the Cath- 
olic Creed, reasonable though it be, and capable 
of solid demonstration, and they receive the most 
senseless superstitions without proof and against all 
reason. A very curious book might be written 
with this title, The Credulity of Infidels ; and more 
than one interesting chapter might be furnished by 
the times in which we live. 

Augustine had now become a thorough material- 
ist. He admitted the existence of a God, but a 
God who was corporeal and extended ; he could 
not conceive the existence of beings purely spiritu- 
al. He says : " When I wished to think on my God, 
I knew r not what to think of but a mass of bodies, 
(for what was not such did not seem to me to be 
anything. ) This was the greatest and almost only 
cause of my inevitable error. For hence I believed 
evil also to be some such kind of substance, and to 
have its own soul and hideous bulk. . . . And be- 
cause a piety, such as it was, constrained me to be- 
lieve that the good God never created any evil na- 
ture, I conceived two masses, contrary to one an- 
other, both unbounded ; but the evil narrower, the 
good more expansive. And from this pestilent be- 
ginning, the other sacrilegious conceits followed. " # 
" I knew not God to be a spirit, and that conse- 

* Conf. lib. v. c. 10. 



$6 Why Men do not Believe, or 

quently he had neither a body composed of differ- 
ent members, nor one who hath parts extended in 
length and breadth, or whose being w r as bulk." # 

Thus was this magnificent intellect stifled, as it 
were, in the folds of sensual passion : it could no 
longer conceive any reality in the world of intelli- 
gence ; it could only recognize data apparent to 
the senses, and phantasms of the imagination which 
corresponded to them. 

The spectacle of such a fall involuntarily recalls 
to me the pages of Plato, in which that profound 
observer points out that sensuality is the usual 
source of those shameful excesses into which the 
most highly gifted minds fall. "Take," says this 
true philosopher, " take these same souls from child- 
hood, cut away and retrench all that the passion of 
lust deposits therein ; free them from the heavy 
masses attached to the pleasures of the table and 
such like enjoyments ; take aw r ay the weight which 
depresses the vision of the soul to inferior things, 
(nepl ra x^ TCt) -) Then if, freed from such ob- 
stacles, the same gaze, in the same men, is turn- 
ed toward the things that are true, (elg rl dh]67j,) it 
will behold them with the same penetration with 
which it now sees the objects to which it is 
turned." f Never did any man justify, in the 
same degree as Augustine, these w r ords of the 
great disciple of Socrates. 

* Con/, lib. iv. c. 3. t Republ. lib. vii. 516. Cf. lib. ix. 586. Tim. 93. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 5 7 

Manicheism could not long satisfy this erring 
genius. He soon found therein weak points and 
important omissions, and his soul was beset with 
doubts. He was flattered with the hope that Faus- 
tus, the most famous teacher of the sect, would 
readily clear away his difficulties. But how was 
he deceived ! He saw this incomparable doctor, 
and found him to be only a brilliant talker ; he 
had no solution for those grave questions with 
which the anxious soul of Monica's son was tor- 
mented.^ Augustine found himself cruelly de- 
ceived, and despaired of finding in Manicheism 
the light he was seeking; still he thought he 
ought not to break the ties which bound him to 
this gloomy sect. "As one finding nothing bet- 
ter," says he, " I had settled to be content mean- 
while with what I had, in whatever way fallen upon, 
unless by chance something more eligible should 
dawn upon me." f In the year 383, the young pro- 
fessor left Carthage and repaired to Rome. He 
had grown weary of the turbulence and dissolute- 
ness of the students of Carthage ; he was told that 
the youth of the Roman schools were more docile 
and modest ; moreover he flattered himself that he 
should attain fortune and glory more rapidly in the 
ancient capital of the world. % He embarked with- 
out his mother's knowledge, who would have accom- 
panied him, and whose heart was broken at the 

* Con/, lib. v. c. 6, 7. t Ibid. c. 7. X Ibid. lib. v. c. 8. 



58 Why Men do not Believe, or 

separation from her son.* He met with the 
Manichees again in Rome, and still joined him- 
self with them. He was convinced the truth was 
not to be found with them, but he despaired of find- 
ing it elsewhere ; and his weary spirit began to 
think that truth cannot be comprehended by man, 
and that possibly the Academics were the wisest of 
philosophers, for they doubt all things, and abstain 
from affirming anything.! 

The brilliant dreams of the professor quickly 
vanished. "Students of rhetoric were not want- 
ing to Augustine ; the disorders which reigned at 
Carthage did not show themselves in the Roman 
schools, but in them turbulence was replaced by 
meanness. It often happened that the Roman 
scholars plotted together, and, to avoid paying 
their master's stipend, deserted his lessons in a 
body. Augustine felt profound contempt for such 
conduct ; disgust soon followed contempt, and 
hearing that the city of Milan had requested 
Symmachus, prefect of Rome, to send thither a 
professor of rhetoric, he solicited and obtained 
the appointment. . . . Symmachus, prefect of 
Rome, was at the same time pontiff and augur, 
and was the same who shortly afterward begged 
of the emperors the restoration of the statue and 
altar of Victory. This defender of the old Roman 
divinities little thought that the young professor of 

* Conf. t Ibid. C. 10. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 59 

rhetoric, whose name was scarcely known to him, 
was destined to strike the last blow against the 
gods, to close the sepulchre of the old pagan world, 
and to plant over its immense tomb the Cross of 
Christ, the prophetic symbol of a glorious futurity." # 
It was at Milan that Divine Providence awaited 
Augustine. There the pure light of truth was to 
open his weary, aching eyes, and restore to them 
that clear strong vision which they had lost through 
contact with passion and sophistry. God made 
use of an eloquent and holy Bishop to lead back 
this poor victim of error to the truth. We shall 
now see by what means. 



SECTION 11. 

Augustine's return to the Faith — He passes through 
intellectual and moral crises before his conviction, 

Augustine arrived at Milan toward the end of 
the year 384 ; he was just thirty years of age. The 
name of the Bishop of Milan was not unknown to 
him, for the fame of Ambrose rilled the world, f 
The professor of rhetoric presented himself to the 
holy Bishop, who received him with the kindness 
of a father. " Thenceforth I began to love him," 

* M. Poujoulat, Hist, de St. Augustin, torn. i. c. n. Cf. Con/, lib. v. 
c. 12, 13. 
t " Notum orbi teme." — Con/, lib. v. c. 13. 



60 Why Men do not Believe, or 

says Augustine ; " at first indeed not as a teacher 
of the truth, (which I utterly despaired of in thy 
Church,) but as a person kind toward myself." * 
How marvellous, that a young man whose infancy 
had been cradled on the knees of a Christian mother 
should not even suspect that truth might be found 
in the Church of Jesus Christ ! So strong were 
the prejudices with which the Manichees had in- 
spired him against Christianity ! If he went to 
hear Ambrose explain the doctrines of religion to 
his people, it was from pure literary curiosity and 
to enjoy the charms of his eloquence. " I listened 
diligently to him preaching to the people, not with 
that intent I ought, but, as it were, trying his elo- 
quence, whether it answered to the fame there- 
of. .. . And I hung on his words attentively, 
but of the matter I was as a careless and scornful 
looker-on." f Are there not many in our days who 
listen to our great Christian orators with the like 
dispositions ? 

However, Augustine, though exclusively taken 
up with the outward form, could not long forbear 
acknowledging that the form in the sermons of 
Ambrose covered serious and solid foundation. 
By degrees his senseless prejudices against the 
Christian Religion gave way ; finally he compre- 
hended that Catholic belief was not so absurd as 
he had imagined, that it could be defended, and 

* Con/. 

t " Rerum autum incuriosus et contempt or astabam." — Ibid. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 61 

that the objections of the Manichees were not un- 
answerable.^ But there he stopped. The Catho- 
lic Faith was not conquered, but neither did it ap- 
pear to him to be victorious. f Is it credible that 
he could be still held back by -the impossibility of 
conceiving a purely spiritual substance ? However, 
his understanding definitely abandoned Maniche- 
ism ; he judged that the tenets of most of the philo- 
sophers with regard to material objects were much 
more probable than the doctrine of the Manichees. 
Therefore he resolved to leave that sect. The 
school of the Academics, who doubt of everything 
alone appeared in harmony with the state of his 
mind. But as his early education had commended 
to him the Catholic Church, he resolved, amidst 
this universal doubt, to remain a Catechumen in 
the Church till something certain might dawn upon 
his soul." 

Monica had crossed the sea and had joined her 
son at Milan. She rejoiced to learn that Augus- 
tine had renounced Manicheism. What tears and 
what prayers had this holy mother poured forth be- 
fore God that the soul of her child might be en- 
lightened, and that he might see clearly the mon- 
strous and immoral errors of that sect ! Now that 
God had heard her prayers on that point she wait- 

* " Ipsa defendi posse mihi jam cceperunt videri ; et fidem Catholicam, 
pro qua nihil posse dici adversus oppugnantes Manichaeos putaveram, jam 
non impudenter asseri existimabam." — Conf. c. 14. 

t " Ita enim Catholica non mihi victa videbatur, ut nondum etiam vic- 
trix apparet." — Ibid. 



62 Why Men do not Believe, or 

ed patiently for him to complete his work. She 
was convinced that she should not die till she had 
seen her son restored to the Catholic Faith. 

But this darkened intelligence had a long road 
to traverse before it could reach the full light of the 
Gospel. The idea of a Being, sovereignly perfect, 
shone in the inmost depth of his soul and seized 
hold of his conscience ; but his understanding, ac- 
customed to the gross imaginations of materialism, 
could not conceive any substance without material 
form.* Augustine was still the slave of his senses 
and imagination. At this time Divine Providence 
caused certain books of the Platonic philosophers 
to fall into his hands. f He read them eagerly, 
and their perusal worked the most salutary revolu- 
tion in his mind. In them he saw that the 
sensible world, which he thought the only 
reality, is but the kingdom of shadows ; that true 
realities are purely intellectual, and that God, who 
occupies the summit of the world of intelligence, 
is a pure spirit inaccessible to the senses and imag- 
ination. It was quite a revelation to this noble 
genius so long enslaved by matter. Quitting at 
length the world of phantoms to enter into that 
inward sanctuary where God shows himself, as Plato 
speaks, his soul found itself in finding God \ it be- 
held itself by the aid of an intelligible light superior to 

* Con/, lib. vii. c. I. 

t " Procurasti mihi per quemdam homlnem . . . quosdam Platoni- 
corum libros ex Grasca lingua in Latinam versos." — Ibid. c. 9. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 63 

itself, a light unchangeable, identical with Truth. 5 * 
Here was the end of materialism. The mind of 
Augustine, restored to itself, was replaced on the 
true path of Christian spiritualism. 

It has been said that Plato's philosophy is the 
human preface to the Gospel. f Doubtless it is an 
incorrect and very imperfect preface, but it is a fact 
that Platonism was the vestibule of Christianity to 
Augustine as well as toother great intellects of the 
early centuries. 

The books of the Platonists had revealed the 
invisible world to Augustine ; but unhappily they 
had increased in him the pride of intellect without 
freeing him from the pride of the flesh, and this 
twofold pride is the principal obstacle to the light of 
Faith. The new disciple of Plato was proud of his 
wisdom ; he did not feel that his necessities were 
infinite, he did not think of praying to God to sup- 
ply them. Humility is the gate of Faith ; prayer, 
which is the acknowledgment of a poverty which 
expects everything from God, is the most beautiful 
expression of humility. God wills that man, who 
is a mere creature, and moreover a fallen creature, 
should confess his own insufficiency and implore 
aid from on high. 

This is the usual condition of the effusion of the 
supernatural light of Faith. Augustine was ac- 
quainted with the teaching of the Church on the 

* Con/, c. 10 and 20. t Ibid. c. 20. 



64 Why Men do not Believe, or 

Incarnation of the Word, and after he had read 
the Neo-Platonists he willingly believed in the 
Word ; but the Incarnation, that mystery of the 
love and humiliation of God, offended his egotism 
and his pride. In his eyes, Jesus Christ was the 
wisest of men, but he was not the Word made 
Flesh. # 

Augustine learnt two things from the study of 
St. Paul's Epistles which he had not found in the 
books of the Platonists : the lost state of man and 
the need of the grace of God to know and practise 
the truth. He comprehended the mystery of that 
twofold law, the law of the flesh and the law of the 
spirit, by the painful conflict by which his soul was 
torn. He possessed the key to those wonderful 
contradictions of which our nature is continually 
the theatre, and from which the Manichees drew an 
argument in favor of the absurd doctrine of two 
eternal principles — one good and the other evil, the 
respective causes of the good and evil which ap- 
pear in us. Once convinced of the fall of man, 
and contemplating in himself the deadly traces of 
the fall, Augustine began to comprehend the bene- 
fit of the Incarnation; the sentiment of his moral 
and intellectual failings inspired him with humility : 
the humiliation of the Word in the mystery of the 
Incarnation no longer appeared to him unworthy 

* Con/, c. 19. Cf. c. 17. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 6$ 

of the majesty of God : Jesus Christ revealed him- 
self to his soul as the true and necessary Restorer 
of fallen humanity. 

Augustine relates that, whilst reading the Epistles 
of St. Paul, he experienced, by the secret operation 
of grace, sentiments of humility and compunction, 
leading him to shed tears and to confess his faults. 
He insists on this point, that humility is the source 
of true light, and repeats these words of Jesus 
Christ to his Father : " Thou hast hid these things 
from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them 
to little ones." # 

Formerly, when a student at Carthage, the son 
of Monica had desired to read the Holy Scriptures ; 
but the simplicity of the Divine Books offended the 
pride of a young man accustomed to the majestic 
style of Cicero, and incapable of penetrating the 
mysterious depths of revealed doctrine : the study 
of these sublime pages was distasteful to him.t 
Since then, the Scriptures had not changed, but 
Augustine was no longer the same man ; his under- 
standing had ripened, his prejudices against Chris- 
tianity had vanished ; the sermons and example of 
Ambrose, the prayers and tears of Monica, had 
opened his eyes, and where he had formerly per- 
ceived only clouds and darkness, he now discover 
ed an admirable light. 

The moral and intellectual transformation of Au« 

* Conf. c. 21. t Ibid. lib. iii. c. 5. 



66 Wky Men do not Believe, or 

gustine daily advanced. He was no longer tempt- 
ed by the dreams of his youth, fortune and glory ; 
but the flesh still held him captive, though the fire 
of passion was allayed. At this juncture, Augus- 
tine sought a venerable priest, Simplician, the 
spiritual father of Ambrose, to whom he opened his 
mind. Simplician related to him the conversion 
of Victorinus, a celebrated professor, whose Latin 
translations of the writings of the Platonic philoso- 
phers Augustine had read. The young African 
professor ardently desired to imitate this great 
man. His understanding was convinced of the 
truth of Christianity, but he was held back by his 
will. " I was bound, " says he, " not with another's 
irons, but by my own iron will. My will the enemy 
held, and thence had made a chain for me, and 
bound me. For of a forward will was a lust made : 
and a lust served became custom ■ and custom not 
resisted became necessity. By which links, as it 
were, joined together (whence I called it a chain) 
a hard bondage held me enthralled. But that new 
will which had begun to be in me, freely to serve 
thee, and to wish to enjoy thee, O God ! the only 
assured pleasantness, was not yet able to overcome 
my former wilfulness, strengthened by age. Thus 
did my two wills, one new and the other old — one 
carnal, the other spiritual — struggle within me ; and 
by their discord undid my soul.'' # 

* Conf. lib. viii. c. 5. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 67 

Augustine has depicted in the liveliest colors 
this grievous combat in which his salvation was at 
stake. The spiritual will, aided by the grace of 
God, can always vanquish the carnal will, and at last, 
after many failings, it completely triumphed in this 
tempest-tossed soul. " For to go toward thee, O 
my God 1" cries Augustine, when relating this inter- 
nal conflict, " and even to go in thither, was nothing 
else but to will to go, but to will resolutely and 
thoroughly ; not to turn and toss, this way and that, 
a maimed and half-divided will, struggling, with 
one part sinking as another rose."* 5 

Augustine has left us the picture of the last crisis 
through which his soul passed before breaking its 
chains. It is a marvellously touching scene. He 
was in the garden of the house he occupied at Mi- 
lan, and was alone with his friend Alypus, from 
whom he had no secrets. A mighty storm agitated 
his mind, and he felt the need of tears. Alypus 
perceived it, and abstained from following his 
friend, when he rose to leave him. Augustine cast 
himself on the ground under a fig-tree, and there 
shed torrents of tears, intermingled with prayers and 
pious groans. All at once a voice issued from a 
neighboring house, like the voice of a young boy or 
girl chanting, and often repeating these words : 
" Take up and read ; take up and read." " Instant- 
ly my countenance altered," says Augustine. " I 

* Con/, c. 8. 



68 Why Men do not Believe, or 

began to think most intently whether children were 
wont in any kind of play to sing such words ; nor 
could I remember ever to hear the like. So, check- 
ing the torrent of my tears, I arose, interpreting it 
to be no other than a command of God to open the 
Book and read the first chapter I should find. For 
I had heard of Antony, that coming in during the 
reading of the Gospel, he received the admonition, 
as if what was being read was spoken to him : c Go 
sell what thou hast and give to the poor, and thou 
shalt have treasure in Heaven : and come follow 
me.'* Eagerly then I returned to the place where 
Alypus was sitting, for there had laid the volume 
of the Apostle when I arose thence. I seized 
opened, and in silence read that section on which 
my eyes first fell : ' Let us walk, not in rioting 
and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, 
not in contention and envy, but put ye on the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in 
its concupiscences/ f No further would I read, nor 
needed I ; for instantly at the end of this sentence, 
by a light, as it were, of serenity infused into my 
heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away. 

" Then putting my finger between, or some other 
mark, I shut the volume, and with a calm counte- 
nance made it known to Alypus. And what was 
wrought in him which I knew not, he thus showed 
me. He asked to see what I had read. I showed 

* Matt. xix. 21. t Rom. xiii. 13, 14. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 69 

him, and he looked even further than I had read, 
and I knew not what followed. This followed, * Him 
that is weak in the faith take unto you ;' # which 
he applied to himself and disclosed to me. And 
by this admonition was he strengthened ; and by a 
good resolution and purpose, and most correspond- 
ing to his character, wherein he did always very 
far differ from me, for the better, without any tur- 
bulent delay he joined me. Thence we go in to 
my mother ; we tell her ; she rejoiceth ; we relate 
in order how it took place ; she leaps for joy, and 
triumphed!." f 

Well might this holy mother triumph and leap 
for joy ! Her tears and supplications were heard, 
all her desire was accomplished. Vigorous souls 
do nothing by halves. From the moment that 
Augustine, yielding to the attraction of grace, had 
said, " I believe," he gave himself wholly to the 
truth ; the most austere practices of the Christian 
religion alone appeared to satisfy the ardor of his 
generous will. This man, who but yesterday could 
not comprehend the possibility of living if deprived 
of gross carnal pleasures, now determined to sacri- 
fice even the lawful joys of marriage, and to live in 
perpetual chastity. It is well known how faithfully 
he kept his resolution. 

The conversion of Augustine happened in the 
month of August of the year 386, when he was 

* Rom. xiv. 1. t Conf. lib. viii. c. 12. 



/O Why Men do not Believe, or 

thirty-two years old. He was baptized by St. Am- 
brose on Easter Eve in 387. Four years later he 
was ordained Priest at Hippo, and toward the end 
of the year 395 he received episcopal consecration. 
It would be rash to say what the genius of Au- 
gustine might have become had it not bent before 
the authority of the Church ; none, I think, can 
take it upon themselves to maintain that the Chris- 
tian Faith was an obstacle to the development of 
this powerful intellect. It is true, it is incontesta- 
ble that Faith was at once a marvellous light and 
a wonderful moral power to this great mind. Faith 
opened to him horizons absolutely new, suffered 
him freely to use his wings and to traverse with 
incomparable ease and security those regions in 
which human reason is naturally called to exercise 
itself. I will venture to remind the reader of a 
passage I have elsewhere written on this subject : 
u Would you understand, would you see with your 
own eyes how far Faith restores, enlarges, elevates 
reason ? Open the works of Plato and of St. Au- 
gustine. Whilst you glance over the writings of 
these two immortal minds you will be struck by 
the eminent doctrinal superiority of the Christian 
Bishop over the Prince of Grecian Philoso- 
phers. First, all the truths which are in Plato are 
to be found in St. Augustine, but with a purity, a 
clearness, a firmness, a plenitude, which we vainly 
seek in the Athenian philosopher. Plato's view is 
frequently obscured even on the ground of natural 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 7 1 

religion, in matters which are within the province 
of reason ; he sees but a part of the truth, he 
mixes error with it, and almost always is deficient 
in firmness even on those points which he seems 
best to understand. And yet every one is agreed 
that mere human reason never had a more intelli- 
gent, more luminous, more complete interpreter 
than the disciple of Socrates. Plato is indisputa- 
bly the noblest and most exalted representative of 
reason devoid of the light of Faith. But reason, 
how high soever it may soar, is full of obscurity and 
subject to a thousand weaknesses, even in that 
part of the moral and religious domain which na- 
turally falls to it. Reason has lost its uprightness, 
and needs the renovating grace of Faith in order 
to regain it and exercise its full power. To Faith 
the Bishop of Hippo owes his incomparable superi- 
ority to the master of the Academy on all great 
questions of the rational and strictly philosophical 
order." # 

* Les Dogme& Catholiques* etc, vol. iii. pp. 302, 303. Paris, i860. 



72 Why Men do not Believe, or 




CHAPTER V. 

The Christian Faith of the Middle Ages — It is para- 
mount in society, a?id governs ?nen of high intellect 
as iv ell as the commo?i people — Was this a blind 
Faith I 

|T the period of tne great Bishop of Hip- 
po's death, the Roman Empire was crum- 
bling away on all sides under the repeated 
inroads of the barbarians. This old-world 
empire was condemned to perish ■ for in spite of 
the work of moral renovation which it had under- 
gone, it still retained a fund of ideas and customs 
which unfitted it for the office of forming Christian 
society. The Church required other elements to 
found a new civilization. Moreover, it was need- 
ful that the justice of God should be exercised 
upon an empire which had trodden under foot all 
laws of the moral order, and which for three cen- 
turies had shed the blood of the disciples of the 
Incarnate Word. 

This is not the place to remind the reader how 
Christianity gained possession of those vigorous 
and healthful races, uncultivated and savage though 
they were, which established themselves on the 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 73 

ruins of the Roman Empire. A new social order 
arose from the bleeding ruins with which the inva- 
sion of the barbarians had strewn the soil of Eu- 
rope. By dint of patience and holy energy, the 
Church had contrived to bind together by close 
ties nations proud of their savage independence, 
and whilst she respected individual nationality, she 
founded that social unity which is expressed by 
the beautiful name of Christendom. The Euro- 
pean nations of the Middle Ages were all united 
by a common Faith ; they all recognized the same 
authority ; they all obeyed the Church as their 
common mother. 

Every one admits that the Christian Faith was 
supreme during the Middle Ages. People even al- 
low pretty generally that Faith was a useful aux- 
iliary to social and moral progress. " The Church," 
says one of the most ardent adversaries of Catho- 
licism, " occupies one step in the immense ladder 
of the development of humanity. Her existence 
is intimately united with the destinies of those 
barbarous nations who destroyed the Roman Em- 
pire ; she was called upon to raise them by faith to 
a state of morality and intelligence. The Church 
was worthy of her mission, for in an age of bar- 
barism, immorality, and ignorance she alone 
opened asylums for science, she alone showed to 
the world models of Christian perfection ; she 
wielded spiritual power in the highest acceptation 
of the word, for she ruled by superiority gf reason 



74 Why Men do not Believe, or 

and wisdom. But this rule, by its very nature, was 
transitory. The world is no longer the world of 
the Middle Ages ; it is no longer a prey to brute 
force ; it no longer requires a power to educate, 
rule, and guide it like a child, by blind faith."* 
People recognize, therefore, in a certain degree, the 
benefits of Catholic Faith in the Middle Ages, but 
they pretend that the nations of that period were 
nations of children, and that the Faith which 
served for their intellectual and moral education 
was a blind Faith. 

I am not going to discuss this twofold thesis, but 
I must say a few words in elucidation of the grave 
question whether infidelity is really the natural and 
legitimate result of the progress of reason. 

The Middle Ages comprise two essentially dis- 
tinct periods. In the first period we see the nations 
who replaced the old Roman society still barbari- 
ans ; they are without moral and intellectual cul- 
ture ; they have the impetuosity, the heat, the in- 
constancy, the simplicity of childhood. In the 
second period we behold these same nations, but 
entirely changed ; they have grown up ; they have 
completed their education ; they are truly civilized. 
The French of St. Louis differ as widely from the 
Franks of Clovis as a grown-up man differs from a 
child. Now it is an incontestable fact that the 



* Studies on the History of Humanity : tJte Papacy and tJie Empire. 
By F. Laurent, Professor at the University of Ghent, p. 54. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 75 

Christian Faith ruled over both these periods of 
the Middle Ages. 

I frankly avow that I cannot repress a smile of 
pity when I hear certain persons speak disdainful- 
ly of the darkness of that grand historic epoch, 
and date the advent of light to the world from 
the sixteenth century. If so, who raised those 
cathedrals, those public edifices, those palaces of 
learning and piety, those monuments of genius 
faith, patriotism — wonders of architecture — which 
still in our days constitute the noblest monuments 
of the soil of Europe? Were these marvels of 
art bequeathed to us by nations of children ? 
Do not they rather deserve the name of children 
who, in the face of these living witnesses to the 
genius and energetic activity of their fathers, in- 
sult and outrage a glorious past ? Blind, ungrate- 
ful children, who blush not to curse the hand to 
whose skill and bounty they owe a good part of 
the patrimony they enjoy. 

I am not a fanatical admirer of the Middle 
Ages ; I believe there were many imperfections, 
many disorders, many abuses in those powerful 
bodies which were bound together by a common 
Faith, a common submission to the authority of 
the Church. But men must indeed be blind if 
they fail to recognize that this period had points of 
incomparable greatness. 

If, as people affirm, the Faith of the Catholic 
populations of the Middle Ages was an unenlighten- 



j6 Why Men do not Believe, or 

ed Faith, they must at least admit that it was not 
the fault of the Church, for in all parts of Europe 
she opened sources of instruction : schools arose 
everywhere by the side of cathedrals, colleges, 
and convents, and some of these acquired great 
celebrity. Great Britain, Italy, Spain, France^ 
Belgium, Germany, Bohemia, Denmark, all Catho- 
lic countries, had universities, or upper and uni- 
versal schools, in which all the sciences were 
taught.^ Centres of light were not wanting in 
Europe : therefore why not admit that learned 
men of the highest order were nourished in her 
bosom ? 

I willingly admit that in the Middle Ages his- 
torical criticism, mathematics, natural sciences, 
were not cultivated with that ardor and success 
which in modern times have acquired for them 
immortal glory. But I believe that the science of 
Religion, the science of the dogmas taught by the 
Church, was never treated with more vigor, pene- 
tration, and power at any period of the history of 
Christianity, than in the age of St. Anselm, of 
Hugh and Richard, of St. Victor, of St. Bona- 
venture, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus. 
No period has surpassed the Middle Ages in the 
philosophy of Christianity, or in the accurate and 
profound study of the principles and the dogmas 

* See Hunter. Tableau des Institutions et des Mxurs de VEglise au 
Mjyjn Age i torn. iii. chap. xxxv. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 77 

of Catholic Faith. What was the motto of those 
men whom ignorant or prejudiced detractors de- 
pict as blindly believing all the teaching of the 
Church ? We read it in the title which St. An- 
sel m had at first intended to give to his Proslo- 
gium, an admirable little treatise on metaphysics : 
" Fides quaerens intellectum." This is the device 
of all the masters of scholastic theology. They 
have faith, they firmly believe all the Church 
teaches ; but they are not content with believing ; 
they desire as much as possible to understand ; 
they seek to give an account of their faith, to 
analyze and penetrate its dogmas, and thus to at- 
tain that science of faith which constitutes true 
Catholic Theology. " Credo ut intelligam," # says 
St. Anselm. I seek not to understand the mys- 
teries of Christianity before I adhere to them by 
faith. I accept them on the authority of the 
Divine Revelation made known by the Church ; 
but when this faith is once established, I endea- 
vor to penetrate its mysteries. My belief helps 
me on the way to science. I believe in order 
that I may understand. " As it is necessary that 
we believe the mysteries of the Christian Faith 
before we discuss them by reason, so does it also 
appear to me negligence not to seek to understand 
that which we firmly believe." f 

* Prvslog , c. i. 

t "Sicut rectus ordo exigit, ut profunda Christiane fidei credamus 
priusquam ea prassumamus ratione discutere : ita negligentia mihi 
videtur, si postquam confirmati sumus in ride, non studemus quod cre- 
dimus intel]igere. ,, — Cur. Dens Homo, lib. i. c. 2. 



78 Why Men do not Believe, or 

Most of the writings of the great Archbishop 
of Canterbury are an eloquent carrying out of this 
thought : whilst he rests firmly on faith he aims 
at raising himself to the understanding of Chris- 
tian truths. At the commencement of the work 
from which we have just quoted, the disciple of 
Anselm asks to be led " to understand by reason 
that all which the Catholic Faith commands to be 
believed of Christ ought really to be believed." * 
The master accedes to his disciple's request, 
and seeks to explain how the Incarnation of 
the Son of God was necessary for the accom- 
plishment of the designs of Providence for the 
Salvation of man. He seeks not to conceal the 
difficulties which infidelity opposes to the mystery 
of the Incarnation ; he points out and discusses all 
these difficulties on the ground of reason. Men 
who speak with so much disdain of the blind faith 
of the Middle Ages, would do well to read this short 
treatise on the Incarnation. 

The spirit of St. Anselm w r as that of all the emi- 
nent scholastics. A celebrated theologian of the 
twelfth century, Richard of St. Victor, has left us 
a singularly remarkable work on the Trinity. At 
the beginning of the book, Richard declares Faith 
to be the starting-point and necessary foundation 
of all theological science. "Faith," he says, "is 
the entrance-gate of the sanctuary ; by Faith alone 



Cur Dens Homo, prsf. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity, 79 

can we penetrate therein. But/' he adds directly 
afterward, "we must not pause on the threshold 
of the sanctuary, we must penetrate into the 
interior, we must use every means in order that 
each day we may daily advance further in the 
knowledge of the truths received by Faith." # " If 
the beginning of all good," says this illustrious 
doctor in another place, " resides in Faith, the con- 
summation and completion of all good is found in 
science. Let us labor to attain this perfection, 
let all serve as steps by which we may go from 
Faith to science ; let us use every effort to under- 
stand what we believe. It is of small account to 
have true and just sentiments with regard to God ; 
we must, as I have just said, endeavor to under- 
stand what we believe ; we must labor unceasingly, 
as much as we are permitted, as much as is pos- 
sible, that we may grasp by reason what we hold 
by faith." f 

Nor was Richard satisfied to establish princi- 
ples with regard to the mission of theology; he 
preached also by example. His work on the 
Trinity contains a truly profound discussion of this 
great mystery ; and though there are weak points 
in his book, it seems to me a sublime masterpiece 
of metaphysical science.^ 

The generality of assailants of the Catholic 



* De Trinitate, lib. i. c. 3. t Ibid, prolog. 

% See Coup cPCEil sur VHistoire de la ThSoIogie Dogmatiqtie, 
pp. 63-66. Laforet. 



8o Why Men do not Believe, or 

Faith seem to imagine that before modern times the 
grounds and teaching of that Faith had nev^r been 
verified by the light of reason — had never form- 
ed the subject of scientific discussion. We have 
already had abundant evidence of the value of 
such an opinion. Moreover, the Middle Ages 
have bequeathed to us the writings of one who is 
illustrious above all doctors of the Church, and 
whose writings would suffice, even in these days, 
victoriously to refute all the objections of infidel 
philosophy to the Catholic Creed. This profound 
and universal genius has founded, with a power 
which has never been surpassed, the whole basis 
of Christianity; he has explained and justified its 
dogmas, its practices ; he has proposed and solved 
all the difficulties which can offer themselves to the 
human intelligence. His works are the most mar- 
vellous expression of the alliance between reason 
and Faith. This man, whom it is scarcely neces- 
sary to name, is St. Thomas Aquinas. 

It is impossible to enter with any degree of 
minuteness into the labors of this great doctor; 
but I consider it incumbent on me to show the 
point of view which he occupies in one of his great 
monumental works. 

St. Thomas has written a work which we should 
now call a demonstration of the Catholic Religion ; 
it is his Summa against the Gentiles. He ex- 
plains the design of the work as follows : " Full of 
confidence in the Divine Mercy, I take upon myself 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 81 

to fill the office of a sage j and though the under- 
taking is beyond my strength, I intend, according 
to my feeble means, to demonstrate the truth profess- 
ed by the Catholic Faith, and to repel all errors 
contrary to it. For, to make use of the words of 
Hilary, I feel that the first duty which I have to 
fulfil toward God, during my life, is to consecrate 
my writings and all the faculties of my soul to the 
task of making him known. But it is difficult, for 
two reasons, to attack each error in particular. The 
first reason is, that we are not sufficiently acquaint- 
ed with the sacrilegious inventions of erring minds, 
to draw from their very teaching arguments capa- 
ble of overthrowing their errors. This method was 
pursued by the ancient fathers, to destroy the erro- 
neous doctrines of the Gentiles, whose dogmas they 
knew because they themselves had been of the num- 
ber of the Gentiles, or at all events had lived 
amongst them and studied their doctrines. The 
second reason is, that amongst them there are some, 
such as the Mohammedans and pagans, who do not 
agree with us in recognizing the authority of Scrip- 
ture, which might convince them. We can dispute 
with the Jews, taking the Old Testament in support 
of our arguments, in the same way as we make use 
of the New Testament in opposing heretics. But 
pagans and Mohammedans admit neither the one nor 
the other. Therefore, it is necessary to have re- 
course to natural reason, to which all are obliged 
to submit, although reason alone suffices not in 



82 Why Men do not Believe, or 

Divine matters. At the same time that I examine 
each truth, I shall point out the errors which it ex- 
cludes, and I shall show how truth which is suscepti- 
ble of demonstration accords with the Christian 
Faith."* 

It is therefore a complete apology of the Chris- 
tian Faith which St. Thomas undertakes to write, 
taking his stand on the ground of reason. He dis- 
tinguishes two orders of truths in the Catholic Creed, 
some rational, others super-rational. "In those 
things which we confess in regard to God," says he ? 
" there is a twofold mode of truth. In fact there 
are truths which exceed the power of human rea- 
son : as, that God is three and one. There are 
others to which human reason can attain : as, for 
example, that God is, that God is one, and other 
similar truths, which the philosophers themselves 
have proved to demonstration with regard to God, 
guided by the light of natural reason."f The great 
apologist explains why it was fitting that rational 
truths themselves should be proposed to man as the 
object of Divine Faith ;$ he points out the causes 
for the revelation of truths superior to reason, § and 
proves that Christians do not lightly believe these 
super-rational truths. He fixes, in the following 
terms, the principles which govern the question of the 
agreement between reason and faith. " Although 
the truth of the Christian Faith surpasses the capa- 

* Contra Gent. lib. i. c. 2. t Ibid. c.3. X Ibid. c. 4. § Ibid, c 5. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity, 83 

city of human reason, it is impossible that it should 
be in opposition to the data which form the basis 
of reason. In fact, first, it is evident that the naU> 
ral data of reason are most true, so much so that 
it is not possible to think that they may be false. 
It is not permitted to look upon that which apper- 
tains to faith as false, because it is too manifestly 
confirmed by God. As that which is false is op- 
posed to that which is true, ... it is impossible 
that the truth of the Christian Faith can be in op- 
position to the principles which are naturally known 
by reason. Secondly, . . . The principles which 
we know naturally are placed in us by a Divine 
hand, for God himself is the author of our nature. 
Therefore these principles are also in the Divine 
Wisdom ; and consequently all that is contrary to 
them is opposed to the wisdom of God, and cannot 
for that reason, come from God. We must there- 
fore conclude that the articles of Faith, which have 
been divinely revealed, cannot be contrary to natu- 
ral knowledge. ... It follows evidently, from 
what goes before, that whatever objections may be 
made against the teaching of faith, they cannot be 
taken legitimately from first natural principles known 
by themselves. Consequently they can have no 
demonstrative force; they are only plausible rea- 
sons or sophisms, which it is easy to refute.* "As 
faith," says the angelic doctor in another place, 
" rests on infallible truth, and as it is impossible to 

* Contra Gent. c. 7. 



84 Why Men do not Believe, or 

demonstrate the contrary of truth, it is evident that 
the proofs alleged against faith are not demonstra- 
tions, but arguments that may be solved. " # 

The Summa against the Gentiles comprises four 
books. The first three are devoted to questions 
of the rational order; the last treats of super- 
rational truths. In the first book, the author con- 
siders, by the method of reason, that which concerns 
God in himself; in the second, he discusses the 
manner in which creatures proceed from him ■ in 
the third, he examines the relation of creatures 
toward him, as toward their end. In the fourth 
book, St. Thomas sets forth and discusses the 
Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity, the Sacraments, 
the Resurrection of the Body, the State of the Soul 
after Death, and the Last Judgment. The whole 
Christian edifice, from the foundation to the sum- 
mit, is examined in this magnificent work, and that 
with a power of reasoning before which modern 
criticism, provided it be sincere, must reverently 
bow. Never has the Christian Faith been sub- 
jected, in its principles and in its dogmas, to a more 
complete and serious scrutiny, f 

If those who speak with so much disdain of the 
Faith of the Middle Ages would read the Summa 
against the Ge7itiles y the Theological Summa, (another 
incomparable monument of St. Thomas,) the Opus- 



Plato had already said that that which is true cannot be refuted, 
t Summa Theol. part i. q. 1. a. 8. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 85 

cula> and his Biblical Commentaries, they would be 
forced to admit that the Faith which they call blind 
and unreasoning is marvellously enlightened, and 
that in the hands of genius it becomes a power 
which sustains, purifies, enlarges reason, and raises 
it to a sublime grandeur unknown to mere human 
philosophy. 

The whole of European society in the Middle 
Ages, with the exception of the Mohammedans, 
whose religious creed is beneath discussion, was 
Christian, and earnest in the profession of the Faith. 
Still we may discover in its bosom a certain num- 
ber of unbelievers. Scotus Erigena, Amaury of Char- 
tres, and David of Dinan must be regarded as such, 
and they all three professed pantheism. # The first 
has left us two considerable works, but we possess 
no writings of the others. The serious error into 
which these writers fell does not testify to the recti- 
tude of their minds. t No one can dream of com- 
paring them, for power of reasoning, with the men 
I have just named, or with the many other illustri- 
ous philosophers and theologians who were the glory 
of the Church of the Middle Ages. Alcuin, Lan- 
franc, St. Anselm, Hildebert of Mans, Hugh and 
Richard of St. Victor, Peter Lombard, Alexander 
of Hales, Albertus Magnus, Vincent of Beauvais, 



* Abelard was a rationalist for some time, but did not remain one. 
t See the excellent work of our lamented friend, Nicholas MSUer : Jo- 
hannes Scotus Erigena und seine Irrthumer. Mayence, 1844. 



86 Why Men do not Believe, ot 

Roger Bacon, St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, Henry 
of Ghent, Duns Scotus, Dante, Gerson, Nicholas 
of Cusa, were all sincere believers. Who will dare 
to maintain that they were not at the same time the 
honor of theology, philosophy, science, and litera- 
ture ? 

We may, therefore, be allowed to conclude that 
if in the Middle Ages men believed with a firm and 
constant faith all the teaching of the Christian 
Religion, they did not believe blindly. 

Now we must examine whether it was really the 
progress of science which brought about the great 
religious schism of modern times which is called 
Protestantism, and which led to infidelity, its natu- 
ral consequence. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 87 



CHAPTER VI. 



Protestantism and Reason* 




AM often tempted to think that I must 
be under the influence of a bad dream, 
or that I must be the victim of some hal- 
lucination, when, on one side, I daily 
hear the Catholic Faith and the Church anathema- 
tized in the name of reason, human dignity, and 
civilization ; and on the other, Protestantism and 
infidelity, the offspring of Protestantism, lauded to 
the skies. I ask myself — Can these outcries be 
sincere ? Can reasonable beings be really met 
with in Europe capable of pronouncing and repeat- 
ing with apparent conviction such an opinion ? 
But I call to mind that iai the infancy of Chris- 
tianity the pious and chaste ministers of Nero, 
Domitian, Caligula, and similar monsters were 
seen hurrying to death, as guilty of impiety and im- 
morality, those who were the sole representatives of 



* God forbid that in the following pages I should dream of wounding, 
or even paining, our separated brethren ! But it is necessary to recall the 
fact that the unhappy men who, in the sixteenth century, caused this fatal 
and irremediable schism in Christian society were enemies alike to reason 
and to social virtue. Protestants of the present day are victims of this de- 
plorable revolution. We pity them ; we judge them not. We would not 
insult the misery of a son whose parents had squandered his inheritance. 



88 Why Men do not Believe, or 

truth, virtue, and moral and religious dignity. I 
remember the numberless proofs of the levity, fol- 
ly, moral and intellectual perversion of humanity 
in all ages ; and I comprehend that in these days 
men may still be found who imagine that they are 
serving the cause of reason, justice, and social pro- 
gress when they devote to public execration that 
grand institution and those sublime doctrines 
which form the safeguards of what they hold so 
dear. Doubtless this is a sad and frightful phe- 
nomenon ; but it is perfectly understood by those 
who consider what human nature is, and have not 
forgotten its history. 

The most determined enemies of the Catholic 
Faith are willing to admit that the Church was a 
precious auxiliary to civilization in the Middle 
Ages, in the midst of those half-barbarous, turbu- 
lent, unsettled races from whose bosom issued the 
well-ordered glories of the modern world ; but they 
pretend that since the advent of Protestantism, the 
Church has but curtailed the legitimate develop- 
ment of reason, and that the Catholic Faith has 
been but a perpetual obstacle to the advancement of 
science and social progress. Luther's revolt against 
the authority of the Pope is hailed as the signal for 
the deliverance of the human intellect, and men 
admire the authors of the Reformation of the six- 
teenth century as the emancipators of reason and 
the restorers of the dignity of man. Not, how- 
ever, they willingly confess, that human reason was 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 89 

set entirely free by the Protestant revolution. To 
Rationalism appertains the glory of giving full, 
entire freedom to this noble captive : but Protes- 
tantism was the first glorious stage on the route of 
definitive emancipation ; and since, by the natural 
and necessary progress of events, Protestantism 
must bring forth Rationalism, it has a right to 
claim the honors of having broken the chains of 
humanity and saved reason by restoring its power. 
This is the thesis which an infidel press is daily de- 
fending, and many persons even elevate this thesis 
to the height of a philosophical and historical axi- 
om above the reach of discussion. 

We have a profound respect for axioms, but on 
condition that they really are axioms and do not 
contradict all principles and facts. We will ask 
leave, then, freely to examine and discuss this 
strange axiom, which our understanding has an in- 
vincible repugnance to accept. 

We will begin by declaring that, with the adver- 
saries of the Catholic Faith, we recognize the close 
affinity between Protestantism and Rationalism, 
and that we consider the latter to be not only the 
natural, but the legitimate offspring of the former. 
In our eyes Rationalism is, de jure as well as de 
facto, the child of Protestantism. But this is the 
limit of our agreement. Far from reason having 
obtained restitution of its legitimate dominion and 
its rights from Protestantism and Rationalism, we 
believe that they have seriously injured reason, and 



90 Why Men do not Believe, ot 

that it would have been irretrievably ruined if the 
Catholic Church, which is the vigilant and incor- 
ruptible guardian of all rights and all principles, 
had not unceasingly opposed their pernicious ac- 
tion. Many persons, we know, will look upon this 
opinion as a supreme paradox, but there are certain 
paradoxes which can be more easily justified thaii 
certain axioms. Let us cast a rapid glance over 
the page of history, and let history decide in which 
of these two contradictory theses truth is to be 
found. 

It will suffice to take the most salient points 
of the moral and intellectual history of modern 
times, and to abide by the evidence of patent 
and undisputed facts. 



SECTION I. 



Primitive Protestantism — Age of Leo X. — The 
real Doetrine of Luther and his Accomplices 
— Denial of Reason and Liberty- — War declared 
against Science — L?nmediate Effects of these Doc- 
trines. 

The age which gave birth to Protestantism bears 
the name of a Pope ; it is the age of Leo X. It ap- 
pears to me that this simple fact ought to suffice to 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 91 

shake the thesis of the calumniators of the Church. 
At the moment when Luther raised the standard 
of revolt, the Pontifical court was the principal 
centre of the scientific, literary, and artistic move- 
ment in Europe ; it was the rendezvous of art- 
ists, authors, philosophers; of men who excelled 
in every branch of intellectual culture. Leo X., 
the generous protector of genius, sought to as- 
semble round him the elite , not only of Italy, 
but of Europe. What sovereign ever had a 
more brilliant circle of scholars ; above all, of 
artists ? Would not Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, 
Michael Angelo, suffice to render any age illustri- 
ous ? And it was in this age, so rich in intellectual 
greatness, and presided over by a Pope, that 
Protestantism appeared, as our adversaries say, to 
set free and reinstate human intellect. Does it 
not seem as if pleasantry were carried too far ; 
and would it not be the time to repeat Horace's 
saying, " Risum teneatis"1 But let us now see 
in what sense Luther and his accomplices under- 
stood the emancipation of reason and the re-estab- 
lishment of human dignity. 

Protestantism, at its birth, appeared not only as 
a revolt against the religious authority of the 
Pope, but at the same time as a protest against 
the principles and moral teaching of Christianity, 
even against that part of Christian Doctrine which 
appertains to natural religion : in a word, against 
reason purified and restored to all its rights by 



92 Why Men do not Believe, or 

Christianity. There are two very distinct points in 
the Reformation of the sixteenth century : a nega- 
tive principle, and positive doctrines. The ne- 
gative principle springs from the very fact of 
the revolt against the authority of the Church ; 
it consists in the rejection of all external au- 
thority in matters of religion. But what did 
Luther teach when he had denied the authority of 
the Pope, and established the principle of the 
independence of each individual Christian ? What 
are his positive doctrines ? Considered in relation 
to reason and the foundations of moral order, 
what symbol did he substitute for the Catholic 
" Credo " ? Here is the teaching of this singu- 
lar liberator of the human mind : By original sin 
man has lost all strength, all power to know truth 
and to do good ; his moral and religious faculties 
are not only weakened, but destroyed ; he has 
become essentially wicked ; reason, in so far as 
it relates to God and to that which concerns 
the moral order, no longer exists ; liberty is 
but a word.* 

Luther wrote a book, expressly against free- 
will, and he has ventured to give to his book 
this title, (Be Servo Arbitrio,) The Slave Will. 
He pretends that philosophy introduced the word 
liberty as well as the fatal term reason, among 
Christians. He sets himself with savage violence 
against philosophy and against all the works of 

* See Mohler, Symbolik, lib. i. ch. ii. § vi. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 93 

human reason. He frequently denounces such 
works as the works of Satan. Listen for a moment 
to this extraordinary emancipation of the human 
intellect : " If the Christian Revelation evidently 
rejects flesh and blood, that is, human reason and 
all that comes from man, ... it follows, with- 
out doubt, that all this can be only darkness and 
lies. Yet the great schools, these schools of the 
devil, do not make the less noise about their natural 
lights, and cry them up to us as if they were not 
only useful, but even indispensable, to the mani- 
festation of Christian truth ; so that we may now 
be perfectly satisfied that these schools are an 
invention of the devil, destined to obscure Chris- 
tianity, if not to ruin it utterly, as in fact they are 
on the high-road to do."* This is the way in 
which Luther speaks of those great schools, those 
universities which the Catholic Church had estab- 
lished in all parts of Europe, and which diffused 
everywhere the benefits of science. The reformer's 
hatred of universities amounted to madness. 
Among other follies, he pretended that the four 
soldiers who are said to have crucified our Lord, 
were the symbolical figure of the universities with 
their four faculties. t In his explanation of St. 
Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, he teaches that 



* Kir char fiostill. IValch, xi. 459, ap. Dollinger. " La reforme, son 
developpement interieur et les resultats qu'elle a produits dans le sein 
de la societe lutherienne." — Tom. i. p. 450, de la trad. fran. Paris, 1848. 
t Dollinger, ibid. 



94 Why Men do not Believe, or 

faith ought to trample reason under foot, or, 
as he expresses it, strangle the beast. In the 
last sermon which he preached at Wittemberg, 
he says, amongst other things impossible to trans- 
late, " Reason is the bride of the devil, a pros- 
titute, an abomination, which with its wisdom 
we ought to tread under foot.''' 

Luther's writings are full of similar amenities 
with regard to reason. 

I willingly admit that Calvin, Zuingle, and other 
leaders of the Reformation, did not wage so fero- 
cious a war against human reason. But ail the 
chiefs of Protestantism are agreed on these two 
points : Man is not free \ good works are useless to 
salvation. Now, I ask, do not these two articles 
of the new creed entail, together with the de- 
nial of reason and the dignity of man, the de- 
struction of all moral order, of all progress, of 
all civilization ? To set up fatalism as a dogma, 
to proclaim the uselessness of good works — what 
is this but to destroy the very idea of duty, to 
destroy all morality, to reduce man to the level of 
brutes ? Had these monstrous dogmas been 
generally received by the nations of Europe, so as 
to influence their daily life, and had they become 
the rule and motive of their actions, there would 
have been an end of civilization, and we should 
now be plunged in that abject and decrepit bar- 
barism in which Mussulman nations, which pro- 
fess fatalism and know no more powerful or 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 95 

salutary idea of duty, are vainly struggling. 
Happily for Europe, " public opinion, good sense, 
decency," as Balmez well remarks, " ranged them- 
selves on the side of Catholicity. Even those 
nations which embraced these fatal doctrines 
as a religious theory, ordinarily rejected them in 
practice. Catholic teaching had left too deep 
an impression on these important points ; too 
powerful an instinct of civilization had been 
communicated to European society by Catholic 
Doctrine. Thus did the Church, whilst she re- 
jected the fatal errors taught by Protestantism, 
preserve society from the debasement which fa- 
talist doctrines carry in their train. By con- 
demning these errors of Luther, which formed, 
as it were, the main point of Protestantism at its 
birth, the Pope," adds the eminent Spanish poli- 
tician, raised the war-cry against an irruption of 
barbarism in the order of ideas ; he favored 
morality, law, public order, society, the Vatican. 
By securing the noble sentiment of liberty in 
the sanctuary of the conscience, he preserved 
the dignity of man ; by combating Protestant 
ideas. By defending the sacred deposit confided 
to its keeping by the Divine Master, the Roman 
See became the tutelar divinity of the future destiny 
of civilization." # 

The vigorous spiritual temperament which Eu- 

* Le Protestantisme comparS an Catholic isme dans ses rapports avec. 
la Civilisation Europeenne, torn. i. ch. xi. 



g6 Why Men do not Believe, or 

rope had received from the action of the Church 
for so many centuries past, enabled it to resist the 
abject and criminal follies of the father of the Re- 
formation, but not without receiving serious and ir- 
reparable injury. It is enough to hear Luther him- 
self despairingly attest the disastrous effects of 
these senseless doctrines ; it is enough to hear 
this pretended restorer of the dignity of man de- 
plore the frightful spiritual degradation which im- 
mediately followed the establishment of Protest- 
antism. " Since the tyranny of the Pope has ceased 
among us," says the great Reformer, " there is no 
one who does not despise pure and salutary doc- 
trine : it is no longer with men that we have to do, 
but with very brutes, with a brutish race."^ . . . 
" People think only of deceiving one another ; they 
take delight only in robbery and rapine : it appears 
as if the Word of Life had the property of chang- 
ing men all at once into so many savage and furi- 
ous beasts. "t " Under the Papacy people per- 
formed with zeal, pleasure, and often at great ex- 
pense, a number of those useless and senseless 
works. . . . Since they have heard the word 
liberty, they speak of nothing else, and use it only 
to refuse to fulfil every kind of duty. If I am free, 
say they, I may do what appears to me good. If 
I cannot be saved by works, why should I impose 
privations on myself, as, for example, by bestowing 

* Expllc. du \erliv. de Moise. Valch. i. 615, ap. Dollinger. 
t Ap. Dollinger, Die Reformation^ etc., torn. i. p. 343. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 97 

alms on the poor? Their conduct is sevenfold 
worse under the reign of liberty than it formerly 
was under Papal tyranny. # . . . Theft and 
robbery are the only things about which people 
show any zeal, f . . . Whilst half the town 
of Wittemburg is threatened with ruin on account 
of adultery, usury, dishonesty, and rapine, there 
is not even a tribunal of justice to rectify all 
this misery. % . . . Formerly, when people 
were yet in the errors of Popery, if any good work 
were in question, all were ready and full of good 
will ; now, on the contrary, they think only of heap- 
ing up riches, of saving, of robbing, of stealing the 
property of others by lies, deception, usury. If we 
still possess some evangelical pulpits and some' 
Christian schools, it is not because people have 
paid the necessary expenses from their own stores : 
they found what they wanted by pillaging ancient 
foundations, which is not very meritorious. . . . 
Had the existence of churches and schools de- 
pended on our generosity, on us who live in this 
age, there would have been long ago neither scho- 
lars nor pastors. "§ "We have a singular spectacle 
before our eyes ; every one pretends to be a Chris- 
tian and follower of the Gospel, and yet they give 
themselves without measure to gluttony, avarice, 
usury, and I know not what other vices." || 

Here we have the confession of the father of 

* Ap. Dollinger, Die Reformation, etc., torn. i. pp. 296, 297. 

t lb. p. 298. X lb. p. 304. § lb. pp. 303, 304 \ lb. p. 306, 



98 Why Men do not Believe, or 

Protestantism to show us how far this magnificent 
Reform had elevated and ennobled souls. True, 
Luther is filled with indignation when it is pointed 
out to him that this moral and intellectual decline 
is the natural and necessary fruit of his preaching 
and teaching. This indignation, if sincere, is cer- 
tainly singular. When people have been taught 
that reason is of no account in the moral and re- 
ligious order, that liberty is but a word, moreover, 
that good works are useless, can it be wondered at 
if they abstain from such works as impose con- 
straint on their appetites and selfishness ; if they 
indulge all their inordinate inclinations, despise in- 
tellectual culture, and descend even below the level 
of brutes ? 

We have seen that Luther was not satisfied with 
accusing reason of absolute want of power in the 
moral and religious order ; but that he deemed it 
to be evil, to be contrary to faith, and that he at- 
tacked all culture of the reason, and especially 
philosophy, with the grossest sarcasms. These 
senseless declamations had their effect. Schools 
and academies were suppressed in many places 
where the new religion was established. " At Wit- 
temburg," says Dollinger, " the preachers George 
Mohr and Gabriel Didymus, both zealous Luther- 
ans, proclaimed from the pulpit that the study of 
the sciences was not only useless but pernicious, 
and that people could not do better than destroy 
academies and schools. The result of this preach- 



The Principal Catises of Infidelity. 99 

ing was to convert the school-house of Wittemburg 
into a baker's shop. The same thing occurred 
throughout the duchy of Anspach." # Protestant 
magistrates, alarmed at the desertion and ruin of 
the schools, addressed a petition to the Margrave 
of Brandenburg, in which they declared, " If this 
state of things continue we shall soon fall into such 
gross ignorance that nothing will be more difficult 
than to find a good preacher or a skilful lawyer."t 

Catholicism had covered Germany with schools 
and academies, besides a vast number of flourish- 
ing universities. Where Protestantism was estab- 
lished many of these universities quickly fell into 
decay. The universities of Erfurt and Rostoch, 
amongst others, were entirely ruined. 

The Reformation produced analogous results in 
Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In 1594 the 
governing senate of Copenhagen addressed a cir- 
cular to the bishops of the kingdom, in order to 
call their attention to certain measures which they 
judged necessary to arrest the ruin of learning, 
" which it could not be denied was imminent." 
" Village schools existed no longer," says Dollinger. 
" Even in towns, schools for the people, as well as 
those of a higher class, were in a state of complete 
decay during the sixteenth century. "J It is well 



* Loc. cit. p. 400. t H>- p. 401. 

% Die Reformation, etc., torn. xi. p. 660. Heart-rending accounts are 
met with in Dollinger of the intellectual and moral state of Denmark at 
this epoch. 



IOO Why Men do 7iot Believe, or 

known that in Sweden the change of religion was 
violently brought about by the king,Gustavus Vasa, 
whose chief object was to gain possession of 
Church property in order to pay the debts he had 
contracted by his wars. In this country, as in Den- 
mark, the pernicious influence of the Reformation 
affected, in the first instance, schools and public in- 
struction. We may see this from two letters, bear- 
ing date 1533 and 1540, addressed by the king to 
his subjects at Upsala, Westeras, and the provinces 
of Upland and Indermania: " We are convinced, and 
we make known to you," says the king, "that the 
schools in all towns of our kingdom are in a de- 
plorable state of decay ; to such a point that, in 
those schools where there were formerly three hun- 
dred students, scarcely fifty can now be reckoned. 
In many parishes they are completely deserted, 
which must be highly prejudicial to the kingdom. 
The principal cause of this state of things is that 
you, good, honest people that you are, neglect to 
have your children instructed as you were accus- 
tomed to do formerly, and that you will not assist 
poor scholars as is your duty, and as your fathers 
and ancestors did. # Besides, but a very small 
number of subjects are now destined to pursue 
learning \ and those who devote themselves, or 
wish to devote themselves, to it are now obliged to 

* Gustavus Vasa forgot that he had himself given the death-blow to 
learning when he confiscated the property of the Church, and employed 
it for far different objects than the education of youth. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity, ioi 

give it up for want of means and support on your 
part. . . . The refusal or reduction of tithes 
and other duties of the same kind has had the fatal 
effect of diminishing the means of maintenance 
formerly granted to those who frequented the 
schools ; and as, moreover, the title of student or 
minister is now held in disesteem, few parents will 
consent to devote their children to learning, so that 
shortly this country will be but indifferently provid- 
ed with learned and capable men." # 

In a letter to the Bishop of Osnaburgh, the Sena- 
tor Joeran Gylte writes, " that public instruction is 
in so deplorable a state in Sweden that a new state 
of barbarism was to be feared; that he knew but 
ten preachers, or high functionaries of the Church, 
who could really be considered learned ; and that, 
in the whole kingdom, it would not be easy to find 
a single theologian or physician who had attained 
the degree of doctor."! 

Erasmus, who was a competent judge of the state 
of literature and science, points out the disastrous 
influence exercised upon learning by the new doc- 
trines in several passages of his writings. Especi- 
ally he denounces Luther as the chief author of the 
decay of instruction. He says : " When a man pro- 
fesses, as Luther did, that the Aristotelian philoso- 
phy — that is to say, all philosophical science based 
upon the principles of Aristotle — is but the work of 
Satan ; when he looks upon all speculative science 

* Ap. Dollinger, loc. cit. p. 664. t Ibid. p. 668. 



102 Why Men do not Believe, or 

in general as sin and error; when, with Farell, he 
treats openly and on all occasions every kind of 
human knowledge as the conception of hell and the 
devil, how can any one suppose that such principles 
should produce aught but a contempt for study, and 
the predominance of avaricious and sensual pas- 
sions ? Has it not been openly taught, at Strasburg 
and elsewhere, that it is contrary to the spirit of the 
Gospel that people should lose their time, whether 
in studying ancient languages (Hebrew alone ex- 
cepted) or in instructing themselves in any other 
branch of human learning ?" # 

Surely this will suffice. Is it not evident that 
Protestantism announced itself to Europe, not as 
the emancipator of reason and science, as some pre- 
tend, but as the inauguration of a veritable barba- 
rism ? The Reformation of the sixteenth century 
appears in history as a revolt of the senses, and of 
all that is low and vile in human nature, against 
reason and moral dignity. It is the resurrection of 
pagan materialism, with its debasement and infa- 
my, as far as the spiritual atmosphere which long 
centuries of Christianity had generated in Europe 
would permit. Had Protestant nations followed 
literally the teaching of Luther and his accomplices, 
they would have sunk below even pagan vileness ; 

* Epist. ad Fratres Germanics infer, p. 4. Coloniae, 1561. — Epist. 
Londini, 1642, p. Q84. " Typographi narrant," says the same Erasmus 
in a letter, " se ante hoc Evangelium citius distrahere solitos tria volu- 
minum millia, quam nunc distrahant sexcenta." And again, elsewhere, 
u Ubicumque regnat Lutheranismus, ibi litterarum est interitus." 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 103 

for pagans did not anathematize either reason or 
liberty, and Athens and Rome honored science, 
literature, and art. The people were devoured by 
the most ignoble practical materialism; but the philo- 
sophers, at all events, glorified reason, and exalted 
noble and generous actions. The moral tempera- 
ment of European nations was strong enough, thank 
God, to resist, in part if not completely, the debas- 
ing doctrines proclaimed by the chiefs of Protes- 
tantism. Soon a number of Protestants might be 
seen, who, alarmed at the flood of depravity which 
threatened to overwhelm civilization with its unclean 
waters, began to work courageously at opposing a 
dike to the devastating torrent. They strove to cor- 
rect what was too visibly base in the new religion, 
and to assimilate themselves as much as possible 
to the moral teaching of the Catholic Church, whose 
neighborhood was not without influence upon them. 
But, after all, it is a fact taught by history that Pro- 
testantism, as set forth by its originators, bears mani- 
festly the mark of the beast, and that it is the nega- 
tion of all those principles which constitute the 
strength and honor of European civilization. 

We know what was the attitude assumed by the 
Catholic Church in the face of this revolution which 
threatened to destroy all moral order. She public- 
ly condemned the mad doctrines of Luther and his 
competitors ; she solemnly anathematized the two 
fundamental articles of the Protestant creed, name- 
ly, that reason has lost all power in that which re- 



104 Why Men do not Believe, or 

gards the moral order, and that liberty no longer ex- 
ists/* She maintained the prerogatives of reason and 
human liberty with immovable firmness, and upheld 
the rights of morality against the attacks of pretend- 
ed reformers. She thus saved not only revealed 
but natural religion, and with it all those notions of 
right, duty, justice, dignity, responsibility, moral 
greatness, without which nations, as well as indi- 
viduals, must fall into contempt and decay, and 
which raise the standard of civilization in propor- 
tion to the influence they exercise upon society. 

By the admirable laws of the Council of Trent 
in matters of discipline, the Catholic Church op- 
posed a true, serious, Christian reformation to the 
false, cynical reformation of Luther and his accom- 
plices. The Council of Trent appears as the bul- 
wark not only of the Christian Faith, but of reason, 
justice, morality, and civilization. 

And whilst proud, corrupt men, assuming to be 
reformers of the Church, were denying reason, de- 
nouncing science, and ruining schools of learning, 
a new Religious Order came forth from the ever- 
fruitful bosom of the Church, which was destined 
to struggle with incomparable glory against the 
moral and intellectual barbarism with which these 
strange reformers threatened Europe. The Com- 
pany of Jesus, illustrious from its very birth, estab- 
lished schools in all directions, founded missions, 

* See the Council of Trent, Sess. vi. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 105 

and combated, with a zeal which can never be suf- 
ficiently admired, the prevailing state of ignorance 
and immorality. 

We must now say a few words of the general 
principle on which Protestantism is based, and 
point out the fruits produced by it. 



SECTION 11. 



The Negative Principle of Protestantism, or the Re- 
jection of Authority in Matters of Religion — Fa- 
naticism and Rationalism the twofold Fruit of this 
Principle. 

When the assailants of the Catholic Faith hail 
Protestantism as the liberator of reason and sci- 
ence, they certainly cannot intend to speak of the 
positive and peculiar doctrines of the Reformation 
of the sixteenth century ; for, as we have seen, these 
doctrines sacrificed reason to a blind and impossible 
faith. Apparently they considered only the gene- 
ral principle of the Reformation, which consists 
definitively in the rejection of all authority in mat- 
ters of religion. When Luther revolted against the 
authority of the Pope, he naturally sought to justify 



106 Why Men do not Believe, or 

his revolt ; and he certainly did this most effectu- 
ally when he declared that, according to the true 
spirit of Christianity, each Christian is the judge of 
religious truth, that he is independent of all external 
authority, and that the Bible is his sole guide. 
Hence arose the principle which was to serve as the 
foundation of Protestantism : it was the offspring of 
the pride of a monk who sought to legitimatize his 
want of submission, and his revolt against authority. 
Luther had no suspicion of the lengths to which the 
principle he proclaimed would be carried ; and it 
must be admitted that most Protestant sects recog- 
nize its value only so far as it affects the authority 
of the Pope : they are ready to accept any authority, 
provided it is not the authority of the Pope. But 
logic preserves its rights, and sooner or later the 
consequences involved in a principle will make 
themselves felt. The natural consequence of the 
Protestant principle was fanaticism or rationalism, 
according as religious enthusiasm or mere individu- 
al reason might prevail in the reading and interpre- 
tation of the Bible. Fanaticism, and fanaticism of 
the most extravagant kind, showed itself in the earli- 
est stages of the Reformation. 

"Protestantism had existed but five years," 
says Mohler, " when several inhabitants of Zwickau, 
Nicholas Storch, Mark Thomas, Mark Stalmer, 
Thomas Muneer, Martin Cellarius, and others, 
repaired to Wittemburg in order to confer with the 
doctors who had adorned the birthplace of Gospel 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 107 

Truth. As Luther was then at Wartburg, it de- 
volved on Melancthon to receive them. These 
brethren in Christ were sent by the Holy Ghost : 
revelations had been made to them on various 
subjects, but for the present they contented them- 
selves with attacking the baptism of infants, which 
they rejected as contrary to Holy Scripture. "* 
Thus arose the sect of Anabaptists. Now that the 
authority of the Church was set at naught, and 
all doctrinal guidance rejected, each man under- 
stood the Scripture in his own fashion, and 
was but too ready to mistake his own fancies 
for the inspirations of the Holy Spirit ; and all 
the more because religious activity in man was 
denied in principle, and he was regarded as 
passive under the hand of God. How many 
visionaries were to be found among the first dis- 
ciples of Luther !f And would to God that these 
fanatics had been no more than extravagant 
visionaries ! But with many fanaticism became 
the source of the most atrocious cruelties and 
most frightful disorders. Germany was inundated 
with torrents of blood. Not to mention other 
facts, the peasants' war, kindled by Luther's doc- 
trines and stirred into a flame by the fanaticism 
of the Anabaptists, covered the soil with thousands 
of human hecatombs. One historian says that, 
during this savage war, " more than a hundred 

* Symboliky b. ii. ch. i. t See Balmez, torn. i. p. 258, etc. 



108 Why Men do not Believe, or 

thousand men might be reckoned as killed on 
the battle-fields of Germany, seven cities were 
dismantled, a thousand Monasteries razed to the 
ground, three hundred Churches burnt, and im- 
mense treasures of painting, sculpture, glass, 
and engraving were destroyed." # Who is ignorant 
of the immoral and bloody follies of which 
Munster was the theatre under the tyranny of 
Mathias Harlem and John of Leyden, that tailor 
who was crowned King of Sion, on the 24th 
of June, 1534? 

Rationalism was another result of the rejection 
of the authority of the Church. Very shortly after 
Luther's revolt Protestants began in earnest to 
make use of the principle of free examination, 
and to apply it to the interpretation of the Bible 
and the discussion of the Christian Faith. These 
men did not believe, with Luther and the other 
fanatics of whom we have just spoken, that 
reason was extinct, and that it had been re- 
placed by the Holy Spirit ; but instead of under- 
standing Scripture in conformity with tradition 
and the authority of the Church, they recog- 
nized no other rule for the interpretation of 
Holy Scripture than human reason, and soon 
went so far as to pretend that nothing is evi- 
dent in Scripture except what does not exceed 
the measure of reason. On these grounds was 

* Rohrbacher, HUtoire Universelle de VEglise Caiholique, t. xxiii, 
p. 227. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 109 

based Socinianism, whose principles were defi- 
nitively established by Faustus Socinus, in the 
second half of the sixteenth century. Poland 
was at first the principal theatre of this sect* 
Its followers accept Holy Scripture as the source 
of Divine Revelation ; but they pretend that God 
has revealed no dogma superior to human reason, 
and whenever they meet with the declaration 
of a doctrine in the Bible which is above reason 
they interpret the text in a metaphorical or 
allegorical sense. All the Christian mysteries 
were soon suppressed. Socinianism was the 
first rough draught of Rationalism. 

Socinian ideas quickly found a number of 
supporters among learned Protestants in Germany, 
France, and England. Various Protestant sects, 
who appealed to the Bible by the same right 
and with the same authority, were soon divided 
on all points of doctrine. They were agreed 
only on the two articles— there is one God, 
and Jesus Christ is the Messiah. They were 
constrained to restrict the fundamental and 
essential dogmas of Christianity to these two ar- 
ticles, under pain of condemning the principle 
whence all these contradictions sprang. And we 
must observe that whilst they acknowledged Jesus 
Christ as the Messiah, they did not intend to pre- 
judge the question as to whether he were God or 

* Lilius and Faustus Socinus, who gave their names to this sect, 
lived long in Poland, where they made numerous proselytes. 



no Why Men do not Believe, or 

merely a messenger from God. Reduced to these 
proportions, Christianity evidently lost all superna- 
tural character, and became nothing more than a 
timid Deism. Thus it appears in the Reasonable 
Christianity of Locke, and other writings of a 
similar class.* 

The door was opened to infidelity. Protestant- 
ism was be^innins: to bear fruit. 



* The historical development of the Protestant principle is given 
in detail in the work entitled De Metlwdo TJieologice, p. 117, by Laforet. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. in 




CHAPTER VII. 

Modern Infidelity — Infidelity prevails first in Eng- 
land, afterward in France and Germany — Po- 
verty of the Infidel Philosophy of the Eighteenth 
Century — Theological Infidelity in Germany. 

jjNFIDELS are to be met with in every 
century of the Christian era ; but such 
a spectacle as we have had before our 
eyes during the last two centuries was 
never witnessed from the day in which Christianity 
first took possession of the nations of Europe. 
Infidelity has become a power, and a formidable 
power, possessing a whole army of soldiers. Here 
is a singular phenomenon in the annals of the 
Christian world. Protestantism, as we have just 
seen, was one chief cause of this grievous fact. 
By the logical development of the principle born 
of Luther's revolt, Protestantism led directly to 
Rationalism ; but in another way — in an in- 
direct way, it contributed to the triumph of infi- 
delity by diminishing the action of the Catholic 
Church, and by weakening in a degree hitherto 
unknown the religious spirit in Europe. Infidelity 
first displayed its power on a Protestant soil 



112 Why Men do not Believe, or 

— in England. In the year 1624, Lord Herbert, 
of Cherbury, published a work in which Deism was 
set forth and systematically defended. The em- 
pire of opinion in England was conquered for 
unbelief by Hobbes, Toland, Blount, Shaftesbury, 
Tindal, Morgan, Chubb, Collins, Woolston, and 
Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke was the master of Vol- 
taire. It is well known that the French infidels 
of the eighteenth century were but the echoes 
of English Deists. M. Villemain recognizes and 
proves this fact in his Cours de Litterature Fra?i- 
false. He says, " The boldest arguments of French 
philosophy in the eighteenth century may be found 
in the English school of the beginning of that 
century." That philosophy was summed up in 
Bolingbroke. In his dissipated youth, his high 
official station under Queen Anne, and in his 
exile, he gave himself up to the pursuit of an 
anti-Christian erudition. His singular learning 
charmed and perplexed Voltaire in the conversa- 
tions they held together in Touraine.* There, 
in place of the libertine scepticism which had 
been his first school, and the only philosophy 
of Vendome and Chaulieu, he met with a learned 
polyglot infidelity, based on the authority of a 
philosopher and a statesman. We can easily 
conceive how vast must have been the power 

* When Bolingbroke was banished from England by Act cf Parlia- 
ment, he withdrew into France, and had a magnificent residence in 
Touraine. He returned to England in 1726. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 1 1 3 

exercised by the reflection of this erudition, 
the confidence of this bold scepticism, the 
essence of irreligion exhaled by such a multi- 
tude of books read rapidly by Voltaire, and im- 
ported into France, where the douane was power- 
less to stop them, and there was no moral influence 
to resist their power. # Voltaire followed Boling- 
broke to England, and passed three years with 
the leaders of English infidelity. " Diderot, the 
most active mind of the eighteenth century after 
Voltaire, borrowed his first philosophical studies, 
and his first essay of the Encyclopedia, from 
England-! Rousseau took a great portion of his 
ideas on politics and education, $ and Condillac all 
his philosophy, from Locke." § Condillac was not 
himself an unbeliever, but his philosophy, a pale 
reflection, as it was, of Locke's, opened the way 
to all the degradation of materialism. It is curi- 
ous to hear this poor Abbe de Condillac, the oracle 
of the infidel philosophers of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, date the advent of philosophy in the modern 
world from Bacon and Locke, whilst he counts 



* Tableau du dix-huitieme siecle, Ve lee. 

f Diderot and D'Alembert, the editors of the Encyclopedia, inscribed 
the name of Francis Bacon on the frontispiece of this famous work, and 
brought out this sad monument of the French science of the eighteenth 
century under the auspices of the English Chancellor. 

% Locke's Essay on Civil Government formed a model for the Contrat 
Social of Rousseau, and to his Thoughts upon Education Rousseau is 
largely indebted for his Emile. 

§ Villemain, loc. cit. IVe leg. 



1 1 4 Why Men do not Believe, or 

for nothing Descartes, Malebranche, Leibnitz, 
Bossuet, Fenelon — all the great minds of the 
seventeenth century, who are the eternal glory 
of French literature. * I have said elsewhere, 
making use of Condillac's sacramental formula 
in his explanation of the generation of faculties 
in his statue, that Condillacism is philosophy 
changing itself into nonsense. f I am certain that 
this sentence will not now be disputed by any 
serious philosopher, whether he be a believer or 
an unbeliever. Locke is certainly not strong in 
metaphysics ; the heights to which the genius of 
Malebranche, Leibnitz, Bossuet, and Fenelon 
soars are inaccessible to him ; but Locke is an 
eagle compared to Condillac. Yet every one 
knows that Condillac held the sceptre of philoso- 
phy in France even up to the first years of the 
present century, and for fifty years the contemners 
of the Christian Faith bowed before this man. 
This does not prove the progress of reason. It 
appears to me that if, instead of seeking inspira- 
tion from England, the France of the eighteenth 
century had been faithful to herself by following 
up the philosophical and literary traditions of her 
seventeenth century, reason would not have been 
the loser. 

* See Condillac's Introduction de VEssai sur VOrigitie des Connais- 
sances Humaines. Leibnitz wrote his two great philosophical works, his 
Essais de TJieodicee and his Nouveaux Essais sur V E?itendement Hw 
ttuiin, in French. 

t Revue Catholique de Louvain. 1863. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 115 

Oh ! that men who look upon infidelity as the 
natural and necessary result of the legitimate pro- 
gress of reason would draw a simple comparison, 
but a comparison which speaks most eloquently. 
The seventeenth century, as represented by her 
greatest men, was thoroughly Christian ; the eigh- 
teenth, on the contrary, was infidel. Now, which 
is the greater of these two centuries for power of 
reason, extent of science, and brilliancy of litera- 
ture ? I think among earnest men there cannot 
be two opinions on the subject : the seventeenth 
century is undoubtedly far superior in all these 
respects to the eighteenth.^ 

As to philosophy, which is the highest manifes- 
tation of reason, we must admit that among French 
infidels of the eighteenth century it was entirely 
null. Who in the present day would dream of 
taking Helvetius, D'Holbach, Lamettrie, and other 
thinkers of the same school, inheritors of Condil- 
lac's sensualism, for philosophers ? What philoso- 
pher would consent to speak seriously of the 
pretended philosophy of Voltaire and J. J. Rous- 
seau ? They were writers of genius, I admit, but 

* " The great writers of the age of Louis XIV.," says Maine de Biran, 
"were so only in their own estimation ; this no longer exists, and now the 
most brilliant amongst them seem but as monkeys, whose tricks excite our 
surprise ; they are lively, nothing more. ... I see men of wit who believe 
only in themselves ; they are puffed up with pride, completely satisfied with 
their own utterances ; they imagine the world admires them, and in fact 
this self-esteem gains for them the approbation of men of weak judgment : 
competent judges ridicule them and their pretensions. 1 ' — Maine de Biran, 
Sa Vie et ses Pensees, p. 329. 



Il6 Why Men do not Believe, or 

strangers alike to philosophy and to all science 
properly so-called. They were men of letters, but 
neither philosophers nor scholars. If, then, the 
eighteenth century was infidel, it evidently did not 
become so by its intellectual and scientific superi- 
ority. We must seek elsewhere for the causes of 
that unbelief, which, with frightful rapidity, invaded 
the higher ranks of French society and spread 
thence over the rest of Europe. 

A conscientious and learned man, the Abbe 
Bergier, who lived in the midst of the infidels of 
the last century, and read all their works, has not 
been afraid to affirm that their unbelief had no 
other source than licentiousness and the unbridled 
sway of the passions. "We make a point," he 
says, at the beginning of his Traite de la Vraie Re- 
ligion, " of ignoring whether the authors of the 
crowd of impious books which attack religion, are 
living or dead, fellow-countrymen or foreigners, 
known or unknown ; we would depict them only 
by their writings : we attack books, not men. We 
will only mention by name those whose works are 
generally avowed, and we will allege no other facts 
than those which result from the works themselves. 
Limiting ourselves to this irrefragable proof, we 
maintain that licentiousness and unbridled passion 
are the real causes of infidelity." # 

The Baron d'Holbach, who, in his capacity of 

* In trod. § 14. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 117 

first maitre d'hotel of philosophy,* must have been 
well acquainted with the philosophical or infidel 
party, passes the following judgment on the greater 
number of his accomplices, in a book of mournful 
celebrity : " We must allow that corruption of man- 
ners, debauchery, license, and even frivolity of mind 
may often lead to irreligion or infidelity. . . . 
Many people give up prejudices they had adopted 
through vanity and hearsay \ these pretended free- 
thinkers have examined nothing for themselves, 
they rely on others whom they suppose to have 
weighed matters more carefully. How can men, 
given up to voluptuousness and debauchery, 
plunged in excess, ambitious, intriguing, frivolous, 
and dissipated — or depraved women of wit and 
fashion — how can such as these be capable of 
forming an opinion of a religion they have never 
thoroughly examined, of feeling the force of an 
argument, or of embracing a system in all its 
parts ?" t 

About the same period another leader of unbe- 



* D'Holbachwas in the habit of giving two dinners a week to his friends 
the philosophers. The Abbe Galiani, writing to him from Naples, the 7th 
April, 1770, says, " La philosophic dont vous etes le premier maitre d'hotel, 
mange-t-elle toujours d'aussi bon appetit ? " It suffices to make the most 
glorious titles odious that a certain man should have appropriated them. 
The name of sophist, so honorable in its origin, was for ever disgraced by 
Gorgias, Protagoras, and other buffoons whose notions were so cruelly lashed 
by the irony of Socrates. It is not the fault of Voltaire's school that phi- 
losophy did not share the same fate. 

+ Systhne de la Nature, torn. ii. ch. 13. Le Systeme de la Nature is a 
manual of atheism. 



1 1 8 Why Men do not Believe, or 

lief spoke thus of a multitude of infidels : " Can 
philosophy boast of having for adherents, in a dis- 
solute nation, a multitude of dissipated and licen- 
tious libertines who despise a gloomy and false re- 
ligion on hearsay, without knowledge of the duties 
they ought to substitute for it ? Will philosophy 
be. flattered by the interested homage and stupid 
applause of a troop of voluptuaries, of public rob- 
bers, of intemperate and licentious men, who con- 
clude that because they forget their God and de- 
spise his worship, therefore they owe nothing to 
themselves or to society, and who think themselves 
wise, because (though often with fear and remorse) 
they trample under foot chimeras which compelled 
them to respect decency and morality ?" # 

Helvetius admits that his friends, the leaders of 
infidelity, were sometimes more taken up with the 
correction of their work than of their behavior.f 
Who is ignorant that Voltaire and Rousseau were 
not precisely models of chastity nor even of probi- 
ty? Frederick II., who had long been intimately 
acquainted with Voltaire, and who was certainly 
not very exacting on the score of morals, wrote 
thus to D argot : " Voltaire behaved here like a 
consummate scoundrel and cheat, and I paid him 
off as he deserves. He is a wretch, and for the 
honor of genius I am sorry that a man who has so 
much should be so full of mischief. Voltaire is 

* Essai sur les Prejug-es, ch. 8. 
t De V Esprit> 2 discours, c. 9. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 119 

the most wicked fool I have ever known : is only 
good to read. You cannot imagine what duplicity, 
cheating, and villany he practised here.' 1 # 

There is no doubt that corruption of morals, 
joined to the weakening of Christian sentiments 
which Protestantism had brought about in Europe, 
was the principal cause of the infidelity of the 
eighteenth century. Reason and science had 
nothing to do with it. I believe that no honest 
man, who has read some of the writings of the 
most eminent infidels of that period, and who 
is acquainted with their moral history, will dispute 
the fact. 

But let me not be misunderstood. I do not 
mean to say that moral corruption is the sole 
cause of infidelity : unbelief has many other 
sources, and I freely acknowledge that among infi- 
dels men are to be found whose lives are purer than 
the lives of many Christians. I merely recall a 
historical fact which is indisputable. 

Further, two distinct forms of infidelity are met 
with in the eighteenth century. By the side of 
that frivolous infidelity, which for the most part 
originated and was kept up in the immoral atmo- 
sphere of the salons of the Voltairian school, there 
was a serious, earnest infidelity, produced by 

* The work of M. Nicolardot, Menage et Finances de Voltaire, avec 
une introduction sur les mceurs des cotirs et des salons au xviii. siecle, 
Paris, 1854, shows what were the habits of Voltaire and the philosophers of 
the eighteenth century. I do not approve the general tone of this work, 
but it contains some curious information. 



120 Why Men do not Believe, or 

causes of a totally different kind. This serious 
infidelity prevailed in Germany especially, and 
its principal organs were the Protestant theolo- 
gians. Germany had paid a heavy tribute to 
the raillery and v frivolity which distinguished 
French infidelity. Frederick II., who had an equal 
contempt for morality and religion, had made Ber- 
lin the rendezvous of French free-thinkers, and en- 
couraged them in their work of demoralization. 
The spirit of the French school was exactly repre- 
sented by some German writers, such as Edel- 
mann, Bahrdt, and Basedow. But about the same 
period a grave, earnest Rationalism arose from a 
wholly different source. The Protestant theologian, 
Semler, carrying out to its legitimate conclusion the 
principle of free examination in the interpretation 
of Holy Scripture, founded theological or exegeti- 
cal Rationalism. This new form of infidelity soon 
found numerous supporters in the ranks of the Pro- 
testant clergy, and since the beginning of the cen- 
tury it has been dominant in the theological schools 
of Protestantism. 

We know that with Protestants theology rests 
wholly and exclusively on the Bible. Luther, 
and the companions of his revolt against the 
traditional authority of the Catholic Church, pre- 
tended that the Bible was the sole source of Divine 
Revelation, and that all Christian doctrine was 
most clearly declared in it ; that, consequently, it 
was useless to interrogate tradition,, which, besides, 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 121 

had for the most part only corrupted the purity 
of the teaching contained in Holy Scripture. 
Hence the boasted disdain of the early Protestants 
for tradition and its most venerable interpreters, 
the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Protes- 
tant theology knows only the Bible, and is in fact 
but the mere simple interpretation of the Bible : it 
is confounded with the exegesis itself. Now, to 
the greater number of Protestant theologians the 
Bible is but a book like any other, stripped of all 
supernatural character, and no more representing a 
Divine teaching than the dialogues of Plato or the 
metaphysics of Aristotle. They interpret it as a 
purely human work ; and when they meet with facts 
or doctrines which transcend the powers of nature 
or the capacity of reason, they either reject them 
altogether or explain them so as to bring them 
down to the level of the purely natural order. 
This is the rationalistic exegesis, which is at the 
same time theological rationalism. It is a ration- 
alism which rests, at least in appearance, on the 
Bible, and makes its comments with the greatest 
care ; but in reality it robs the Bible of its very es- 
sence, and recognizes no other light than that of 
mere human reason. It differs from ordinary or 
philosophical rationalism only in form. 

For some years past, a movement favorable to 
the Christian Faith has stirred the ranks of the 
Protestant theologians of Germany. Many distin- 
guished scholars have broken with rationalism. Un- 



122 Why Ilia i do not Believe, or 

fortunately their faith has no fixed rule, and their 
opinions are, for the most part, vague and uncer- 
tain. The early Protestants, in practice, forgot the 
principle of free examination and free interpreta- 
tion of the Bible, and were fixed in their belief by 
common and supposed obligatory confessions of 
Faith : now, even believing theologians no longer 
accept these ancient creeds. Julius Miiller says : 
u It is patent, that in all the theological works re- 
cently published, and in which the collective doc- 
trines to be believed are set forth, there is not one 
which has not declared that the Lutheran confes- 
sions need modification on some point or other f 
and this regards definitions of the highest impor- 
tance." And Ehrenberg said, before the general 
Synod of Berlin, that he had for years sought a 
man who should agree on all points with his Con- 
fessions of Faith, and that he had never found 
such a one. It is affirmed that, for the last hundred 
years, no theologian, either from his professor's 
chair or from the pulpit, has taught one single 
doctrine perfectly agreeing in form and matter 
with the published Confessions, f How can a 
common settled faith be maintained, when no doc- 
trinal authority is recognized on religious subjects ? 
Would that those theologians who believe and who 
must groan over the divisions and uncertainty pro- 

* Deutsche Zeitschrift, 1855, p. 107. 

\ Revue wunsuelle pour V Eglise evangelique unie. 1847, ii. 84. Ap. 
Dollinger, VEglise et les Eglises, pp. 30S, 309. Paris, 1862. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 123 

duced by the necessary development of the princi- 
ples of the Reformation — would that they might 
at length comprehend that the authority of the 
Catholic Church is the Divine, indispensable safe- 
guard of the firmness and unity of the Christian 
Faith, and that a full, pure Faith is to be found in 
the bosom of Catholicism alone ! 



124 Why Men do not Believe, or 




CHAPTER VIII. 

The Principal Forms of Contemporary Infidelity — 
Materialism — Pantheism — Sophistry and Scep- 
ticism — Spiritualistic Rationalism . 

RENCH unbelief is rarely distinguished 
by originality. In the eighteenth cen- 
tury it copied England, in the nineteenth 
it copies Germany. From England, 
France borrowed that cynical deism and debased 
philosophy which quickly engendered materialism ; 
from Germany she has in our days received Pan- 
theism, and that presumptuous sophistry which, 
together with the principles of religion, pretend 
also to change the fundamental laws of reason 
itself. 

How thankful and happy should believers feel 
when they behold the result of the arrogant efforts 
of poor human reason in revolt against the teach- 
ing of Christian Faith ! For the last century two 
systems have been predominant by turns in the 
schools of infidelity ; and what are these systems ? 
Materialism and Pantheism. And what is Mate- 
rialism ? what is Pantheism ? I ask the question 
of every understanding that is not dead or wholly 
perverted by falsehood. Materialism is reason ab- 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 12 J 

dicating her throne, which she abandons to the 
flesh ; it is the mind compassing its own ruin, and 
delivering itself up as a vile slave to the caprices 
of the body which was made to serve it ; it is the 
soul losing the very consciousness of its own real- 
ity, and believing itself to be but the property or a 
dependent of the organs of sense ; it is man as- 
similated to the brutes, and glorying in this assi- 
milation. And what is Pantheism ? Pantheism, as 
we shall explain presently, is reason abdicating its 
throne and abandoning it to sophistry ; it is the 
radical change of all principles which form the 
light of the moral and intellectual life of human- 
ity ; it is the negation of good sense and reason — 
of pure, simple reason — that which all men call 
reason. Behold the intellectual and moral pro- 
gress accomplished by the human mind in revolt 
against God ! What a lesson for any one capable 
of reflecting and judging ! 

At the beginning of the present century, Material- 
ism was the fashionable doctrine with infidels, at 
least in France. We know to what a depth of de- 
gradation and ignominy it had sunk at the end of 
the last century. Men, who in their pride despised 
the Christian Faith, and rejected Christianity in the 
name of the progress of reason, blushed not to place 
a naked prostitute upon the altar of the Incarnate 
God. Behold the goddess, who, by a just judgment 
of Divine Providence, was permitted to call herself 
the goddess of reason ! 



126 Why Men do not Believe, o> 

Materialism was vigorously combated by men 
whose names have retained their celebrity. Royer, 
Collard, Maine de Biran, M. Cousin, carried on a 
persevering war against this ignoble philosophy, 
which ended in destroying its authority as a recog- 
nized philosophical system. Many unbelievers, 
however, renounced Materialism only to embrace 
Pantheism. France and Europe are indebted to 
Germany for this monstrous philosophy. 

The earliest professors of Pantheism in modern 
times were Giordano Bruno, an unfrocked monk of 
the sixteenth century, and Baruch Spinoza, a Dutch 
Jew, of the seventeenth. As long as the mind of 
Europe preserved its uprightness and balance, there 
was nothing to fear from Pantheism. The seven- 
teenth century only beheld in Spinoza's philosophy 
the mad dream of a delirious mind ; the eighteenth 
century, though infidel, borrowed nothing from Spi- 
noza's philosophy, and took from him only a por- 
tion of his rationalistic criticism of the Bible. 5 * Pan- 
theism established itself in Europe, and began to 
acquire importance only in the last years of the 
eighteenth century, and especially in the beginning 
of the nineteenth. It appeared first in Germany, 
where, thanks to the religious decomposition 
brought about by the natural development of Pro- 
testantism, the training of the intellect had passed 

* Voltaire and his followers were only acquainted with the Trait} 
Thkologko-Politico of Spinoza ; they were ignorant of UEthique^ which 
contains this writer's philosophy. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 127 

almost wholly into the hands of the rationalistic 
philosophy. Kant was at that time its great mas- 
ter. This philosopher, who had been thrown into 
an absurd course by the Ca r tesian formalism of 
Wolf, made the idea of God, and all those general 
and absolute ideas which are the light and rule of 
reason, purely subjective forms of the human mind 
• — necessary forms certainly , but devoid of all ob- 
jective value. Thence he argued the impossibility 
of proving the existence of God, and the reality of 
a moral order beyond our ego, by means of theo- 
retical reason, that is to say, of reason properly so- 
called. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the most celebra- 
ted of the disciples of the philosopher of Konigsberg, 
went still further. He taught that there is no real 
God, no moral order exterior to the ego; according 
to Fichte it is this ego which is God, which is the 
true Sovereign Reality ; all else is the work of the 
activity of this ego, the product of thought. This 
is idealistic or subjective Pantheism, and was the 
first form of the revived Pantheism. 

Pantheism having reappeared, the works of Spi- 
noza, which had been long forgotten, became once 
more the fashion ; and this writer, who professes the 
most brutal and repulsive materialistic Pantheism, 
was hailed as the prince of modern philosophy. 
Infidel France soon shared the infatuation of Ger- 
many for this miserable philosopher whom Male- 
branche called a wretch, and whose system he treat- 
ed as a frightful chimera. I want no other proof 



128 Why Men do not Believe, or 

of the feebleness and decline of reason among 
our infidel philosophers than their judgment of 
Spinoza. 

Schelling and Hegel were the most famous repre- 
sentatives of Pantheism in Germany during the first 
half of the present century. Hegel is the undoubt- 
ed master of the sophistry of our day. 

Victor Cousin, the founder of the eclectic school, 
who, in 1817, visited the leaders of the philosophi- 
cal movement in Germany, imported Pantheism 
into France. For several years past he has sin- 
cerely repudiated this fatal doctrine. The most 
considerable writers of the eclectic school never 
adopted Pantheism. But by the side of this pure- 
ly philosophical school arose another whose teachers 
openly professed that system. I speak of the hu- 
manitarian socialist school, which reckons Pierre 
Leroux among its leaders, as also the unhappy 
Abbe de Lamennais, whose pride plunged him into 
every kind of error. Leroux teaches Pantheism 
clearly in his work De THumanite, and Lamennais 
tried to reconcile it with Christianity in LEsquisse 
d'une Philosophic A philosopher of some repute, 
M. Vacherot, formerly a disciple of Cousin, still 
professes Pantheism. M. Ren an lately summed up 
the metaphysics of Vacherot in the following sen- 
tence : " God is the idea of the world, and the world 
is the reality of God." As for M. Renan himself, 
that tardy copyist of German extravagance, he re- 
cognizes no God but the ideal, as it manifests itself 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 129 

in the human mind, with which it is confounded. 
This is pure atheism.^ 

Belgium did not escape the general contagion. 
A German philosopher, M. Ahrens, a disciple of 
Krause, introduced Pantheism into the University 
of Brussels. It is now professed there by M. Ti- 
berghien, the pupil and successor of M. Ahrens, in 
the chair of philosophy. 

This detestable system has assumed many vari- 
ous forms, and I willingly admit that the Pantheism 
of Schelling, Krause, and other contemporary philo- 
sophers differs in many respects from the Panthe- 
ism of Spinoza ; but these differences are but ac- 
cessory j the foundation of the system is the same in 
all, and it is this : Pantheism consists in recogniz- 
ing but one sole substance, and in giving to this 
one substance the name of God. God is all, since 
all participates of his substance, and is truly con- 
substantial with him. According to this doctrine, 
God is no longer a personal Being, subsisting in 
himself, and living by his own life, substantially 
distinct from the world and from each one of us, 
a Being gifted with a personal intelligence and will. 
He is the sole and universal substance, displaying 
himself under the form of the world, and of hu- 

* The Vie de JSstes, which the infidel press of Belgium, France, and 
Italy has welcomed as the last utterance of German criticism, has excited 
irrepressible ridicule in learned Germany, even in the bosom of the ra- 
tionalistic schools. Grave German critics cannot comprehend how any 
one, in the critical state of science, can regard in a serious light the author 
of such a book. 



130 Why Men do not Believe, or 

manity, developing himself necessarily and unceas- 
ingly under this twofold form, which is the sole and 
necessary manifestation of his life. God exists not 
without the world and without man ; he has no re- 
ality but in them and by them ; man and the world 
are in strict terms the realization of God. This is 
the essence of all Pantheism. We maintain that 
such a doctrine not only injures reason, but radi- 
cally destroys it. Nothing can be plainer. 

Pantheism, by recognizing only one sole sub- 
stance or essence, called by the name of God, pre- 
tends, and must pretend, that all things and all 
ideas are fundamentally identical, and can only dif- 
fer in form ; it proclaims the principle of absolute 
and universal ideality. Hence the identity of God 
and the world, of mind and matter, of necessity 
and liberty, of truth and falsehood, of good and 
evil, of just and unjust, of being and not being, as 
Hegel teaches positively : hence in one word the 
identity of things that are contrary and contradic- 
tory. All this is the direct denial of that funda- 
mental principle without which there is neither rea- 
son, language, nor thought. It is impossible to af- 
firm yes and no at the same time with regard to the 
same point. I ask, is not all this the total, radical 
destruction of reason ? No, Pantheism is not philo- 
sophy ; it is mere sophistry ; it is the production of 
a reason overthrown and become unreason or sys- 
tematic folly. 
The logic of Hegel, in which that daring master 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 131 

of German philosophy affirms in express terms the 
identity of things that are contrary and contra- 
dictory, is simply the logic of supreme absurdity, 
and it is the only logic that Pantheism can pro- 
duced 

Observe further that by representing God, or the 
universal substance, as something indeterminate, 
which according to Hegel's expression becomes 
and never is, which changes and modifies itself un- 
ceasingly, which develops itself and progresses in* 
definitely, Pantheism suppresses at one stroke those 
necessary, inimitable, absolute ideas which are the 
support, light, and rule of our intelligence, and with- 
out which man is no longer a reasonable being, ra- 
tionis particefis. If there be no perfect and un- 
changeable God, how can there be unchangeable 
truth ? Where would truth have her foundation or 
her abode? Consequently how could there be 
principles? With the immutability of God, all 
truths and all principles must necessarily fall. 
No longer is anything fixed, all is subject to 
change. All, according to the saying of Heracli- 

* Pius IX., in his memorable allocution of June 9th, 1862, thus charac- 
terizes Pantheism : " With a dishonesty only equalled by egregious folly, 
they do not hesitate to assert that there exists no divine Being, no eternal 
providence, omniscient and supreme, distinct from the universe, and that 
God and nature are identical, and that God as a consequence is subject to 
change ; that all things are God and have the very essence of the Deity, that 
God is identical with the world, and necessarily spirit with matter, ne- 
cessity with liberty, truth with falsehood, good with evil, what is just with 
Injustice ; than which it is certainly impossible to invent or imagine any- 
thing more foolish, more impious, more contrary to reason itself" 



132 Why Men do not Believe > or 

tus, is in perpetual flow. In this universal and in- 
cessant movement, in which at every instant one 
wave succeeds another wave, reason can no longer 
exist, and thought, deprived of its anchor, wanders 
at hazard over a tempest-tossed ocean. 

This is the goal attained by that proud philoso- 
phy which the most famous infidels of the nine- 
teenth century have thought fit to substitute, in the 
name of progress and reason, for the ancient Chris- 
tian Faith. 

For some time past Pantheism has lost ground 
in Europe ; it is on the decline in strictly philoso- 
phical schools, though it undoubtedly still reck- 
ons a great number of adherents in Germany. Bel- 
gium, France, and elsewhere. And it is unfortu- 
nately undeniable that the influence of Pantheism 
will be long felt among us. This detestable philo- 
sophy has corrupted all principles, and the reason 
of Europe has probably suffered irreparable injury 
from the long sway which it has exercised over the 
minds of men. The manner in which many writers 
who do not profess Pantheism treat religion, social 
and moral sciences, history, and even literature, 
sufficiently attests that they still suffer from this 
fatal influence. 

Since the decline of Pantheism in Germany, 
Materialism has gained favor there. At present, 
it numbers many supporters among the repre- 
sentatives of philosophy, but especially among 
the interpreters of the natural sciences. Feuerr- 
bach, Max Stirner, Arnold Ruge, Vogt, Moleschott, 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 133 

L, Buchnery* not to mention others, lejoct every- 
thing that transcends the limits of experience — 
God, the moral law, the immortality of the soul, 
all general principles which together form the 
light and rule of reason, and without which man is 
no longer a reasonable being, but a mere sensitive 
being, an animal. German Materialism followed 
Pantheism, and in more than one instance sprang 
directly from it. Hegel deified man: his disciple, 
Feuerbach, brought man down to the level of the 
beasts. Is not this a repetition, in the moral order, 
of the old story of Nabuchodonosor ? Man madly 
lifts himself up to the desire of becoming God, 
then falls below his own nature of man ; he be- 
comes like to the beasts, and sinks so low as 
even to seek to convince himself that such igno- 
miny is his glory. 

In France, two or three writers calling themselves 
philosophers have, in the name of reason, re- 
sumed the defence of Materialism. Auguste 
Comte and Littre have founded a pretended philo- 
sophy which they adorn with the name of positive 
philosophy, because it recognizes only facts attested 



* Moleschott's book, Le Cottrs Circtdaire de la Vie, (Kreislauf 
des Lebens,) published for the first time in 185s, has passed through 
four editions in ten years ; Biichner's, entitled Matiere et Force, {Kraft 
und Stojf,) which appeared in 1856, has had seven editions in five years ; 
it has been translated into French. M. Charles Vogt, in a work re- 
cently published under the title Legons sur V Homme, sa Place dans 
la Creation et dans VHistoire de la Terre, tells us that " lecerveau secrete 
la pensee, comme le foie secrete la bile et les reins secrete Purine." 
This is the pure teaching of Cabanis. 



134 Why Men do not Believe, or 

by experience. The school which proudly calls 
itself the critical school is worthy to figure by 
the side of the positivist school. Taine and 
Renan, who are firmly persuaded that before 
the appearance of their school there was neither 
science nor philosophy upon earth, are its chief 
upholders. These enlightened minds profess Ma- 
terialism, Taine roughly and openly, Renan in 
delicate terms, and with shades of such nicety and 
variety as to do honor to his imagination. This 
austere moralist brands that " egotism which makes 
us eagerly seek the reward of virtue beyond the 
tomb." # In M. Renan's eyes the immortality 
of the soul is a chimera which fades away before 
the touch of criticism, it is an invention of 
Greek philosophy. This eminent critic mocks at 
the "doctrine, called spiritualist, which cuts man 
into two parts, body and soul, and looks upon 
it as quite natural, that while the body rots the 
soul should survive. "f In fact, is it not much 
more natural that the soul should decay with the 
body ? 

What a noble philosophy! And how proud 
ought a man to feel who has made such wonder- 
ful discoveries ! M. Renan is, in fact, so enchan- 
ted with himself, that — in order doubtless to 
justify his immeasurable pride — he goes so far as 
to point out pride and disdain as the chief among 

* Vie de Jesus, p. 55. Paris, 1863. f If,. p . 5I . 



The Principal Cattses of Infidelity. 135 

virtues. Listen to this really original moralist : 
" The word pride, in the language of Christian 
moralists, is held in suspicion ; it is used to stigma- 
tize precious qualities, and even virtues. "* " There 
is a certain elevation of soul which is only ob- 
tained by a habit of disdain. "f "Disdain almost 
always produces a delicate style. . . . Disdain is 
a delicate and delicious luxury which a man enjoys 
by himself : it is discreet, for it suffices to itself "t 
And in the blasphemous romance which it has 
pleased him to call Vie de Jesus, this man, who, 
according to the words of a famous orator, has found 
means to make praise of the most repulsive form 
of blasphemy,§ extols our Lord Jesus Christ for 
having "founded that great doctrine of transcen- 
dent disdain, the true doctrine of the liberty 
of souls, which alone gives peace. "|| 

Is not this intoxication ? is not this truly de- 
lirium ? To have descended to the lowest degree 
of intellectual abjection, and there, haughty in the 
midst of ruin, pity those who, as Plato says, 
have not so far corrupted their understanding? 
What can there be in the intellectual order below 
Materialism, and that state in which reason, wholly 
stripped and corrupted, no longer believes in truth, 
and can no longer discern between that which 

* Essais de Morale et de Critique, p. 174. 

t lb. p. 209. + 15. p. 1 88. 

§ M. de Montalembert, Deuxieme Discours pro nonce a V Assembler 
Generate des Catholigues, tenueh Malines du 18 ati 22 A out, 1863. 
I! Vie de Jesus, p. 117. 



136 Why Men do not Believe, or 

is and that which is not ? This is M. Renan's 
position, as his last writings testify. This singular 
leader of the pretended critical school in France 
is perhaps the most remarkable type of those sub- 
tle but corrupted minds, numerous enough at the 
present time, who have no concern as to what is 
true or what is false, and who lull themselves with 
images and a vain sound of words. Nor is this 
class of mind new. It was dominant in Greece at 
the epoch when Socrates appeared. Protagoras 
and Gorgias are the real ancestors of M. Renan 
and our other contemporary sophists. It is the 
glory of Socrates that he delivered his country 
from these public poisoners. Who will deliver 
European society of their miserable descendants ? 
By the side of the Materialists, Pantheists, scep- 
tics, sophists of every kind, there is among unbe- 
lievers a large class of men who seek to maintain 
the fundamental dogmas of natural religion and 
the essential principles of moral order : these are the 
spiritualistic rationalists. The supporters of spi- 
ritualistic Rationalism recognize the existence of a 
personal God, distinct from the world, infinitely 
perfect. With Christians, they affirm that this God 
is one, and the Creator of all things ; they defend 
the spiritual nature, liberty, and immortality of the 
soul ; they admit an absolute and immutable mo- 
ral law, the necessary basis of the distinction be- 
tween moral good and evil, and they confess that 
rewards and punishments are reserved in a future 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 137 

life for men who observe or violate the precepts of 
this law; but they do not define the nature of 
these rewards and punishments, nor their duration. 
They say, moreover, that man owes a worship to 
God \ but they do not say in what this worship 
consists. This, in its essential features, is the mor- 
al and religious creed of many cultivated and hon- 
est minds who will not receive the Christian Faith, 
and absolutely reject whatever is supernatural. 

It is the fear of the supernatural which causes 
these Rationalists, without denying the doctrine of 
Divine Providence, singularly to lower it. They 
reject all positive intervention of God in the world, 
because otherwise they must admit miracles, which 
would destroy their system. They do not even re- 
cognize the legitimacy and efficacy of prayer in 
the sense of petition : they pretend that God can 
not derogate from the general law of the universe 
in order to bestow certain favors, whether in the 
moral, religious, on material order, on any individ- 
ual man who asks for them. 

What becomes of religion with s.ich doctrines as 
these ? To what is the dogma of Providence re- 
duced ? To this : that God exercises no direct ac- 
tion on the world ; that he is a stranger to the life 
of humanity ; that truth and error, good and evil, 
the happiness and misery of man, are matters of 
profound indifference to him ; that it is enough 
for him to have created the world ; henceforth he 
has no further concern with it, that it must go on 



138 Why Men do not Believe, or 

as it can, and that each creature must suffice to it- 
self. I protest that I cannot understand how any 
one who believes in a personal and infinitely per- 
fect God can reduce him to act such a part as 
this. Truly this God of Rationalism is but the 
statue of God ; he is not the living God. This is 
the remark of M. Guizot, who was long in the 
trammels of Rationalism : " The best among Ra- 
tionalists," he says, "only suffer the statue of God 
(if such an expression may be used) — the statue 
only, an image, a piece of marble — to subsist in the 
world and in the human soul. God himself is no 
longer there. Christians alone possess the living 
God. It is this living God," adds the statesman, 
" whom we need. It is requisite for our present 
and future salvation that faith in the supernatural 
order, that reverence for and submission to the 
supernatural order, should be restored to the world 
and to the human soul in great minds as in simple 
minds, in the highest ranks as well as in the hum- 
blest. On this condition rests the truly efficacious 
and regenerating influence of religious belief. 
Without this it is superficial, and all but vain." # 

Assuredly spiritualistic Rationalism — which is 
undoubtedly the best, the noblest, the most honest 
form of unbelief, is, in my opinion, anything but 
reasonable. 

* Meditations et Etudes morales, preface. Paris, 1852. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 139 



PART II. 




CHAPTER I. 

What Faith is. 

|ANY people have a strange idea of reli- 
gious Faith. Some look upon it as only 
an office of the imagination, or, at most 
of the feelings. According to them, re- 
ligion is wholly in the sensible part of the soul ; 
reason has nothing to do with it. Hence they 
consider all religions as indifferent in themselves. 
Religious feeling may be produced under diverse 
forms ; these forms are of no importance ; it is 
sufficient that the feeling be sincere, and that it 
show itself by the homage of a respectful submis- 
sion to the Divinity. The question of doctrine 
and truth wholly disappears ; it is of no moment 
to know whether a religious belief be true or false, 
if it be conformable or contrary to reason ; all is 
judged exclusively from the point of view of the 
heart. This is truly a senseless opinion, insulting- 
alike to reason and to God. Yet a great number 



140 Why Men do not Believe, or 

of men hold it, according to whom Christian Faith 
is a blind sentiment, more or less respectable, 
which may be good enough for the common people, 
but is unworthy of a cultivated mind guided by 
the light of reason. 

On the other hand, men are to be found who 
place themselves at a wholly opposite point of 
view ; who persuade themselves that faith is the 
work of the understanding alone, that feeling and 
the will have no part in it; and they conclude 
thence that faith is not free, that it in no way de- 
pends on us, and that if some receive the Christian 
creed whilst others reject it, it is because they see, 
or think they see, what is hidden from the others. 
If it were so, unbelief could never be a sin; at 
most, putting things at their worst, it would only be 
a mistake. Men who reason thus can have reflect- 
ed but little on the part the will plays in the adhe- 
sion of the soul to truth. 

Let us begin by recalling the principles of Cath- 
olic theology on the nature of faith. When these 
principles are known, it will be easier to discern 
the causes of infidelity. It is necessary to know 
exactly what the Christian Faith is, in order that 
we may comprehend what the obstacles are which 
hinder its birth and growth in a soul, that we may 
know what things are most likely to weaken or 
even extinguish it in a soul where it already exists. 

To believe, in the religious and Christian sense 
of the word, is to adhere to any truth on the au- 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 141 

thority of God, who is the reveal er of that truth. 
Human faith accepts a thing on the testimony of 
man ; Divine and Christian Faith on the testimony 
of God. We believe all the articles of the Catho- 
lic creed, because we are convinced that all these 
articles have been revealed by God, and conse- 
quently they have for their warrant the testimony 
of God himself. We do not adhere to such or such 
a doctrine as the object of our Faith, on the word 
of the Pope, or of the Church. In our eyes, the 
Church is but a means of going to God, a medium 
divinely established to communicate the teaching 
of God to us. The Church is not the Truth ; she 
is its guardian and its organ ; she bears witness to 
the Truth. 

We must observe, by the way, that the Catholic 
Church and the Divine Revelation made in Jesus 
Christ are two things absolutely inseparable. From 
the moment we admit that God has made a divine 
and supernatural revelation to the human race, and 
that he has prescribed a religion for men to follow, 
we must also necessarily admit that his providence 
has established an authority charged to maintain 
this religion pure and entire, to preserve it, and to 
propagate it. It is absurd, supremely absurd, to 
suppose that God would reveal and establish the 
religion which men must follow in order to attain 
their end, and then leave this religion to itself, 
abandon it to chance, without any care for its fate, 
suffering it to become corrupt and to fade away by 



142 Why Men do not Believe, or 

contact with time, and the interested caprices and 
innumerable moral and intellectual weaknesses 
which human nature continually displays. A God 
who could act thus could not be to us a personal 
God, infinitely wise and perfect ; he would be a be- 
ing as inexplicable as the god of Epicurus, a god 
whom reason must disown. Many Protestant au- 
thors, in spite of their prejudices, recognize the 
necessary and indissoluble union between Chris- 
tian revelation and the Church. "When we start 
from a supernatural principle in religion,' ' says 
Staeudlin, " we must necessarily admit that the 
Divinity, who has deigned to make this revelation 
to man, must have taken care that it should not be 
abandoned to the arbitrary judgment of men ; not 
to admit this principle is to argue inconsistently. '"* 
"What the doctrine of Divine Providence is with re- 
gard to the creation," says another Protestant writ- 
er, " such is the doctrine of the infallibility of the 
Church with regard to Divine Revelation. They 
must stand or fall together, "f 

The Divine Word, which the Church does but re- 
peat and explain to men, cannot deceive. God is 
Truth, and the Truth does not lie. When it is once 
thoroughly established that a doctrine comes from 
God, it would be absurd to demand other proofs of 
the truth of this doctrine. People do not ask 
Truth if it speaks the truth. Our Faith, resting on 

* Staeudlin 's Magazin, vol. iii. p. 83. 
t N. Qtiartalschrift) Jahrgang ix. n. 3. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 143 

the authority of the Divine Word, is therefore shel- 
tered from all error ; the foundation on which it 
rests is immovable. It is supremely reasonable, 
for it depends on the veracity of God himself, who 
is infinite reason. 

We are certain that the doctrines to which we 
adhere by Divine Catholic Faith really come from 
God. We do not admit lightly or without cause 
the fact of Divine Revelation ; we believe it on 
the authority of truths whose evidence in our eyes 
is absolutely incontestable, and twenty times more 
striking than that which surrounds the best authen- 
ticated historical facts. These proofs form what is 
called in theology motives of credibility. These are 
the preliminaries of faith — preliminaries which 
human reason has a right to demand, and may ex- 
amine by the light of earnest, upright, loyal criti- 
cism. Christianity does not fear an attentive and 
thorough examination of its title-deeds. On the 
contrary, it calls for it. But people must not de- 
ceive themselves. However evident the motives of 
credibility may be in themselves, they do not suffice 
to produce faith in the soul ; they prepare the way 
for faith, but they do not create it. The causes on 
which faith depends are higher, and of a more in- 
terior nature. Here we must strive to understand 
thoroughly the teaching of Catholic theology, 
throwing light, as it does, upon depths whose exist- 
ence is not even suspected by multitudes of inat- 
tentive and superficial minds. 



144 Why Men do not Believe, or 

St. Thomas Aquinas gives the following defini- 
tion of faith : " To believe is an act of the under- 
standing adhering to Divine Truth by command 
of the will, which is moved by the grace of God. 
The act of faith is subject to free will in relation 
with God, and therefore it is meritorious." # We 
shall make a brief commentary on this definition, 
in which all is comprised. Faith is the result of 
the combined action of God and man. Let us 
see first what man does \ then we will show what 
he receives from God, and how far he must be 
aided by God in order to believe with a supernatu- 
ral and true faith. t 

The understanding does not act alone in man in 
the formation of the act of Faith, but the will 
also, and principally; it is the act of the whole 
soul, with all its faculties, all its powers. To 
believe is assuredly, as St. Thomas says, an act 
of the understanding, because the object of Faith 
is Divine Truth, and truth in itself is the object 
of the understanding, and not of the will ; the 
understanding is made to know that which is true, 
the will to love and conform itself to that which is_^ 
good. It is therefore exact to say that faith is the 
direct and immediate act of the understanding, 



* " Ipsum credere est actus intellectus assentientis veritati divinae ex im- 
perio voluntatis a Deo motae per gratiam ; et sic subjacet libero arbitrio in 
ordine ad Deum ; unde actus fidei est raeritorius." — Summa. Theol. 2, 2, 
q. ii. art. 9. 

t " Credere immediate est actus intellectus, quia objectum hujus actus 
ost verum, quod proprie pertinet ad intellectum."— ' -Ibid* q. iv. art. 3. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 145 

not of the will. But it is only by the intervention 
of the will which moves, directs, and commands it, 
that the understanding accepts Divine Truth, and 
gives adhesion and assent to it. There is no con- 
straint upon the will with regard to the direction it 
shall take, and in which it will be followed by the 
understanding: the will is free. Undoubtedly it 
can, under grave responsibility, choose between 
two contrary directions, and, consequently, either 
unite and bind the understanding to truth, or turn 
it away, and precipitate it into error. On this 
account, the act of faith, on the firm adhesion of 
the understanding to Divine Truth, is meritorious ; 
it is a free act, free with a liberty subject to trial, 
and not yet fixed in the love and possession of the 
truth. 

Suarez justly observes that, to accomplish the 
act of faith, it is not sufficient that there be no 
repugnance in the will to believe • it is necessary 
that by a positive act it move the understanding to 
attach itself to revealed truth.* It is, then, the 
will that is the principal agent of faith in us. It is 
not the understanding, but the will, which decides 
with regard to faith. In order to believe, we must 
will to believe ; will it positively and seriously ; 
the direction and assent of the understanding 
depend upon the will. In this sense St. Augustine 
says, and St. Thomas repeats after him, that Faith 

$ De Fide. disp. vi. sect. vi. n. 7. 



146 Why Men do not Believe, or 

dwells in the will of those who believe : " Fides 
consistit in credentium voluntate." # 

.1 fear that this doctrine, which gives so great a 
preponderance to the will in the act of faith, may 
astonish and disturb more than one of my readers, 
w r ho are accustomed to look only to the under- 
standing when the knowledge and acceptance of 
truth are in question. But they may be reassured. 
I am confident that if they will read to the end, 
they will see that the principles of Catholic the- 
ology, on the adhesion of the soul to Divine Truth, 
are in harmony with the fundamental and intimate 
laws of our nature, and can be misunderstood only 
by a prodigiously superficial psychology. I will 
confine myself, for the present, to some short 
remarks. 

Most theologians, in explaining the free and 
meritorious character of the act of faith, content 
themselves with observing, "That the object of 
faith is obscure to us — not evident in itself. Thus 
the dogmas of the Holy Trinity, of the Incarna- 
tion, of the Redemption, of the Eucharist, for 
example, are certainly not in themselves evident 
to our reason ; they are mysteries ; that is to say, 
obscure truths superior to reason, truths in 
which/' as Leibnitz remarks, "sober minds will 
always find sufficient explanation to believe, and 
never as much as is needed to comprehend. " f The 

* Ap. St. Thorn, loc. cit. q. vi. a. 1. 

t Discours de la Coiiformite de la Foi avec la Raison, n. 56. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 147 

proofs which bear testimony to the existence of 
Divine Revelation are evident — they ought to be 
evident, they are the motives of credibility — but 
the things revealed, being above reason, remain 
obscure ; not wholly obscure, doubtless, for in 
that case they could not be known, and faith would 
be impossible, but in that kind of half-obscurity 
which excludes evidence. This defect of evidence, 
as theologians justly remark, explains the possi- 
bility of hesitation and denial on the part of the 
understanding, and shows the necessity of the 
preponderance given to the will in the accomplish- 
ment of the act of faith. 

This is elementary to any one who reflects. The 
mind, not being subjugated by evidence, may accept 
or reject the truth that is offered to it ; all depends 
on the disposition of the will. 

But we must go further. Supposing the truths 
proposed were not superior to reason, a sad and 
daily experience shows that reason might still 
reject them. Liberty plays a considerable part 
even in the domain of truths of the natural order, 
on which the clearness of rational evidence sheds 
light. Is not the existence of God evident ? And 
yet men are to be found — I mean learned men, 
men of cultivated minds — who are ignorant of 
God, or who form so unnatural a notion of him that 
the God whom they seem to acknowledge presents 
none of the features of the living and true God. 
What is more evident than the freedom and im- 



148 Why Men do not Believe, or 

mortality of the soul ? And yet these truths meet 
with contradiction, and obstinate contradiction. 
Whence comes this ? Do not these facts offer 
abundant proof that the assent of the mind re- 
mains free even in the face of evidence ? How 
could it be free if the will — the sole power in us 
which is free — did not intervene in the judgments 
we form ? 

We must not forget that our understanding is not 
a solitary faculty, living and acting by itself alone 
in entire independence. It is closely united to the 
other powers of our soul, and is moved and gov- 
erned by the will, the centre and chief of these pow- 
ers. The will makes the man in the moral and re- 
ligious order, as it does in the social order ; and it 
exercises an incalculable power even in the order 
which appears purely intellectual. I shall return 
to this subject hereafter. 

Let us now show, according to Catholic teaching, 
what part is necessarily borne by God in the act of 
faith. 

"To believe," says St. Thomas, " depends on the 
will of those who believe ; but the will of man must 
be prepared by God through grace, and thus be 
raised to the supernatural order. " # Faith apper- 
tains to the supernatural order; hence it cannot be 
the work of nature, nor of our soul abandoned to 

* " Credere quidam in voluntate credentium consistit ; sed oportet 
quod voluntas hominis praaparetur a Deo per gratiam, ad hoc quod ele- 
vetur in ea quae sunt supra naturam." — Summa TheoL 2, 2, q. vi. ad 3um. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 149 

its own strength. Let us hear the second Council 
of Orange on this point, whose decisions have been 
received as rules of faith throughout the whole Catho- 
lic Church. " If any one shall say that by the 
powers of nature we can do any good in order to 
the salvation of eternal life — that we can think or 
choose as we ought, or consent to the preaching of 
salvation, that is to say, to the Gospel, without the 
light and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who gives 
to all the sweetness which makes us consent to 
and believe the truth — such an one is seduced by 
the spirit of heresy, and hears not the voice of God, 
which says in the Gospel, ' Without me you can do 
nothing.' (St. John xv. 5.)"* "If any one shall 
say that the beginning as well as the increase 
of faith, and even the pious sentiment by which 
we believe in him who justifies the ungodly, 
and attain the new birth of holy baptism, is in 
us naturally, and not by the gift of grace, that is to 
say, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which 
corrects our will, and turns it from infidelity to faith, 
from impiety to piety — such an one shows himself 
opposed to the apostolical dogma, the blessed Paul 
saying, ' Being confident that he who hath begun a 
good work in you will perfect it unto the day of 
Christ Jesus,' ( Phil. i. 6 ; ) and elsewhere, i Unto 
you it is given for Christ, not only to believe in him, 
but also to suffer for him' (v. 29;) and, 'For by 

* Caput vii. 



150 Why Men do not Believe, or 

grace you are saved through faith, and that not of 
yourselves, for it is the gift of God.' ( Ephes. ii. 8. ) "* 
These decisions of the Council of Orange were 
confirmed by Pope Boniface II. In the letter which 
the Pontiff wrote on this subject to the illustrious 
Saint Cesarius of Aries, who had presided over the 
Council, we read: "We rejoice greatly that in the 
Council which you and certain Bishops of Gaul 
have held, the Catholic Faith has been followed, in 
defining by common consent, as you point out, that 
the faith by which we believe in Jesus Christ is 
given us by Divine Grace preventing us. . . . 
For it is a certain and Catholic dogma, that in all 
good works, of which faith is the chief, even before 
we have yet willed, Divine Mercy prevents us, in 
order that we may will ; it accompanies us when we 
will, and follows us in order that we may perse- 
vere in the faith."f 

Grace must therefore prevent our will, and incline 
us to consent to, and to believe revealed truth ; it 
must accompany and sustain our changeable and 
inconstant will in this holy disposition ; finally, it 
must follow the good will it has inspired, and help 
us to will to adhere always to the Word of God. 

Nothing in the principles of Christianity can be 
more simple or more logical than this doctrine. 
We are not: created for a purely natural end, one to 
be realized by the mere exercise of our natural pow- 
ers, but for a supernatural end, above the reach of 

* Caput v. t Labbe, Concil. torn. iv. col. 1688. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 151 

our faculties This end is to see God face to face, 
or in his essence, as he is in himself, a single na- 
ture subsisting in three distinct persons ; to possess 
him fully, and to enjoy the happiness attached to 
such possession. This vision of God, this beati- 
tude, is manifestly above nature. How can we 
attain it? The happiness of a free and intelligent 
being consists in the realization of his end, and he 
must achieve it by his own acts j but the" acts of 
man, in themselves, are not means proportioned to 
an end superior to nature. In order, therefore, 
that there may be harmony or proportion between 
the means and the end, it is necessary that these 
acts should be elevated, ennobled, transformed, by 
a principle superior to nature, and thus become 
supernatural ; this principle is grace. Is it not a 
common axiom that means must be proportioned to 
their end ? If, then, the end of man is supernatural, 
his acts, which are the means by which he must 
attain this end, must of necessity be supernatural, 
and consequently animated by a principle superior 
to nature. This reasoning appears to me geometri- 
cally exact. 

Grace, by which God enlightens our understand- 
ing with a supernatural light, attracts, fortifies, and 
elevates our will, sows in us the seed of that 
higher life which is to become the Christian life, 
and will be the initiation and first faint sketch of 
that eternal life, which, begins upon earth and 
will be finished and consummated in the glory of 



152 Why Men do not B Hi eve, or 

heaven. " Grace and glory," says St. Thomas, 
tC are generically one ; because grace is nothing else 
than a certain beginning of glory in us."* Now 
faith is precisely the beginning of that supernatu- 
ral life, of which the glory of the beatific vision 
will be but the marvellous completion. It is by 
faith that man enters of full right, if I may thus 
speak, in the supernatural order. It is, therefore, 
easy to understand the indispensable necessity of 
grace for the act of faith. 

There are three kinds of life possible to man in 
this world : the life of the body or of the senses ; 
the life of mere natural reason ; the life of grace, 
raised above nature by faith, and working by charity. 
" The first," says a religious writer, whose simple, 
frank language I will venture to borrow, "is the 
life of an animal ; the second, the life of a man ; 
the third, the life of a Christian. . . . The car- 
nal man," adds this author, " the man wholly 
immersed in the animal life — a drunkard, for ex- 
ample — can conceive nothing beyond eating and 
drinking, nothing beyond the body and what flat- 
ters the senses. All that is intellectual — science, 
poetry, moral beauty — all is folly to him. The 
rationalist or philosopher, w T holly taken up with 
nature, can conceive nothing above human reason. 
All that is supernatural and divine — faith, grace — 
is folly to him. He is to the Christian, what the 
drunkard is to the philosopher. The carnal man 

* Loc. cit. q. iv. art. 9 ad 2m. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 153 

may mistake or deny the intellectual order : that 
order, none the less, exists. In the same way the 
rationalist may mistake or deny the supernatural 
order, the order of grace : that order, none the less, 
exists. The carnal man, who would raise himself 
to the intellectual order, must in some sort die to 
himself, in order to enter a new state of existence, 
a new world. The rationalist who would raise 
himself to the supernatural order, the order of 
grace and faith, is obliged in some sort to die to 
himself, in order to enter a new state of existence, 
a new world such as he had never even suspected. 
The carnal man in becoming a rational man 
ceases not to be a man, but becomes better and 
nobler. The rational man in becoming a man of 
faith ceases not to become a rational man, he be- 
comes a man of Divine reason."* 

Rationalism recognizes only the first two of 
these states — life according to the senses and life 
according to reason ; it altogether denies the super- 
natural life, the life of faith. Such a denial is 
precisely as well founded as that of the animal 
man, who denies the life of reason because it is 
extinct in him. Maine de Biran, after having him- 
self traversed all the phases of Rationalism, came 
to discern clearly these three states of exis- 
tence in man, by simple psychological observation ; 
and with the exception of a few inaccuracies of 

* Rohrbacher, De la Grace et de la Nature, xxxii. and jl 



154 Why Men do not Believe, or 

language, unavoidable in one who is a stranger to 
theological study, he has described them well. 

He names these three conditions of life, the ani- 
mal life, the human life, the spiritual life. # 

Whatever blind philosophy may say, faith does 
not destroy nor lower reason, but, on the contrary, 
strengthens and raises it in a singular degree. Did 
faith lower the reason of St. Augustine, St. Thomas, 
Leibnitz, Bossuet, of Joseph Gorres ? Faith gives 
to human reason a superior light, which, at the 
same time that it discovers absolutely new horizons 
to our gaze, illuminates the domain which the eyes of 
our understanding have already discerned, with a 
clearer and brighter light. Philosophers who reject 
faith to confine themselves to mere reason, are just 
like astronomers who would lay aside the telescope, 
to study the heavens with their naked eye. Faith 
is the telescope of human reason. Armed with 
this powerful help, our understanding has a clearer 
perception of that which is within its reach, and in 
the heaven of heavens, beyond its natural horizon, 
it discovers new and marvellous worlds, to which 
its unaided vision could never have attained. To 
reject faith is manifestly to diminish reason, and 
to deprive it of its most wonderful auxiliary to 
knowledge. 

* See Les Nouveaux Essais cFA nthrofiologie> in the CEuvres inedites 
of Maine de Biran, published by Ernest Naville, vol. iii. pp. 534, 535. 
Paris, 1859. The principal questions relating to grace, in the theological 
and philosophical points of view, have been fully treated in vol. iii. of 
Dogmes CatJtoliques. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity, 155 

Faith, inasmuch as it is light, produces a two- 
fold effect in us : first, it reveals to us truths of 
the supernatural order ; next, it adds to the ra- 
tional evidence of the light of reason in the circle 
of truths of the purely natural order, such as the 
existence of God, his attributes, the Creation of 
the world, Providence, the spiritual nature, liberty, 
and immortality of the soul. More than this, faith, 
as light and as power, purifies the eye of the under- 
standing from a thousand foreign elements, which 
embarrass it, and hinder its free exercise ; it gives 
a movement to the will which turns it toward God 
and the intelligible world, and at the same time 
raises the whole soul ; helps it to shake off the yoke 
of those things that are inferior to its nature, and 
leads it toward those higher regions in which its 
destiny calls it to move and live. Faith is a power 
which struggles against the inclination, unhappily 
innate in fallen man, which drags our soul toward 
inferior objects, and imparts to us a contrary incli- 
nation. Plato would say that faith restores to 
the human soul the wings that were broken in its 
fall- 
Let no one infer from the Catholic dogma that 
grace is necessary to enable us to believe with a 
divine supernatural faith, that there are therefore 
men necessarily condemned to be without faith, be- 
cause God has not given them the grace to believe. 
The Church — which knows God, and beholds in 
him a compassionate Father, and not an unjust 



156 Why Men do not Believe, or 

master, gathering where he has not sown — teaches 
that he refuses grace to none. It is also a Catholic 
dogma that Goci wills all men to be saved, and that 
he offers to all the grace necessary to enable them 
to acquire the ineffable glory to which he bids 
them. The Council of Trent declares that "God 
commands nothing impossible ; when he orders 
anything, he at the same time warns us to do what 
we can, to ask for what we cannot do of ourselves, 
and he will help us to do it." # 

To ask for what we are unable to attain of 
ourselves is the ordinary condition which God im- 
poses for the bestowing of his favors. He wills 
that we, who are created and essentially depend- 
ent beings, should confess our own insufficiency, 
and implore the aid of him from whom light and 
strength descend. The old man who discovered 
the teaching of the Gospel to the philosopher Jus- 
tin, when he was seeking for the truth, said to him, 
" Pray that the gates of light may be opened be- 
fore you ; for no one can see and comprehend these 
things unless God and his Christ give him under- 
standing."f Justin followed this counsel, and was 
rewarded by a faith which he sealed with his blood. 
If men who do not believe would pray as this ar- 
dent and generous philosopher prayed, they would, 
I am convinced, soon believe with a faith as firm 
as his. 

* Sess. vi. cap. xi. 

* Dial, cunt Tryph. n. 7. See above, p. 37. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 157 




CHAPTER II. 

Infidelity — In what it consists. 

NFIDELITY is the opposite of faith- 
What we have just said of the nature 
and conditions of faith may make us un- 
derstand what constitutes the ground of 
unbelief. But we will add a few words to describe 
it in a more precise and complete manner. 

Generally speaking, we call any one an infidel 
or unbeliever who does not bend his reason before 
Divine Revelation and submit to its authority. 
Infidelity is the denial of all Divine Revelation — 
of the primitive revelation made to the father of the 
human race, continued later to the patriarchs, 
then to the prophets of God's people, and finally 
accomplished in Jesus Christ, the Author and Fin- 
isher of our Faith. Unbelief denies the superna- 
tural order of which we spoke just now, and the 
miraculous order which supposes and involves a 
Divine Revelation. It denies any determinate and 
positive intervention of God in the history of hu- 
manity. It absolutely ignores the immense divine 
fact which occupies the two epochs of history — the 
epoch Of the ages anterior to Jesus Christ, and the 
epoch of the ages which followed him — the fact 



158 Why Men do not Believe, or 

which shines with incomparable brilliancy in Chris- 
tian society, the most moral, learned, civilized, 
powerful society that the world has ever seen. The 
infidel pretends to rely solely upon reason ; he ad- 
mits no other light than the natural light \ he re- 
cognizes no other facts than those which can be 
explained by natural causes ; miracles in his eyes 
are a chimera as much as Divine Revelation ; he 
rejects all that surpasses the power of nature, as 
well as all that exceeds the light of reason. 

Such is the general character of infidelity as it 
shows and asserts itself in the midst of Christian 
Europe. All our unbelievers, to whatever school 
they belong, and however great may be their differ- 
ences, agree in the denial of the supernatural and 
the miraculous ; all make a boast of recognizing 
only reason and nature. Therefore the names of 
Naturalism and Rationalism express exactly the 
common principle which unites them. 

St. Thomas teaches that infidelity, like faith, is 
an act of the understanding, but an act command- 
ed by the will. He says, " Infidelity, as well as 
faith, is in the understanding as in its immediate 
subject j but it is in the will as in its first mover."* 
He adds : " It is the contempt of the will which 
causes the dissent of the understanding, and it is 
in this dissent that infidelity essentially consists. 

* " Infidelitas, sicut et fides, est quidem in intellectu sicut in proximo 
subjecto ; in voluntate autem sicut in primo motive" — Loc. cit. q. x. 
art. 2. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 159 

Hence the cause of infidelity is in the will, al- 
though infidelity itself is in the understanding.* 
Infidelity having its cause in the will, is, like faith, 
a free act ; it is the fruit of a free decision of the 
mind. Therefore it is imputable. Faith is a vir- 
tue, and infidelity is a vice."f 

It is scarcely necessary to observe, that it does 
not follow from hence that every man who does 
not believe in the Christian Revelation is necessa- 
rily guilty. A man may be unbelieving and yet 
not an infidel in the strict sense of the word. In- 
fidelity, properly so called, as St. Thomas defines 
it, supposes that the ignorance of Divine Revela- 
tion is not wholly involuntary. There are men 
who do not know, and who, morally speaking, can- 
not know, Jesus Christ ; therefore these men do 
not believe in him : but their infidelity is a purely 
negative infidelity, as St. Thomas calls it ; they 
are non-believers rather than infidels ; this absence 
of faith is not imputable to them because it is 
nowise in their will. There is no real, and con- 
sequently no culpable infidelity, in the theological 
sense of the word, except voluntary infidelity. 
Where there is no freedom there is no sin, is an ele- 
mentary principle of morals. But there is another 
principle no less elementary which is too often 

* " Dicendum quod contemptus voluntatis causat dissensum intellectus, 
in quo perficitur ratio infidelitatis : unde catisa infidelitatis est in volun- 
tate ; sed ipsa infidelitaS est in intellectu?'* — Loc. cit. q. x. art. 2 ad 2 m. 

t St. Thomas, ibid. art. 1. 



160 Why Men do not Believe y or 

forgotten, and it is this : a thing may be voluntary 
directly or indirectly, in itself or in the cause upon 
which it depends. God alone knows the secret 
dispositions of the soul, and the obstacles which 
many unbelievers oppose, more or less voluntarily, 
to faith. It is indisputable that the will plays an 
important part in infidelity, and this will be better 
understood as we proceed. 

The diverse forms of Rationalism, which are 
but different degrees of infidelity, would suffice to 
justify the doctrine of St. Thomas on the first and 
fundamental cause of unbelief, as I have already 
remarked in speaking of faith. All unbelievers af- 
firm, with marvellous unanimity, that they will 
obey reason and reason alone ; they add, with one 
voice, that the language of reason is sufficiently 
clear on all questions which affect the destiny of 
man, and that they need no other teacher. If it 
be thus, whence arise those radical differences 
which divide the faithful and respectful disciples 
of reason into two opposite camps ? Whence 
comes it that Renan, an atheist and materialist, 
contradicts, on all the principles of morality, Jules 
Simon, who, like him, recognizes no other authority 
than reason ? Is it not because all do not equally 
listen to the voice of reason, whose sovereignty 
they proclaim in theory whilst they ignore and re- 
sist it in fact ? How many men assume toward 
reason the same attitude which the best of the 
rationalists assume toward faith ! The sophists, 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 161 

by an evil and culpable disposition of the will, 
ignore the authority of reason, as the rationalists 
ignore the authority of faith. 

There are rebels and revolutionists in the king- 
dom of reason as there are in the kingdom of faith. 
There are also, which is sometimes more excusable, 
sick and languishing minds whom the light wounds, 
and who see things only through a deceptive me- 
dium. This intellectual malady has too often a 
voluntary cause • but sometimes it is the result of 
education and circumstances from which its victims 
have been unable to free themselves. 

I have already pointed out the principal forms 
of contemporary infidelity. In the first half of this 
century, Pantheism reckoned the greatest number 
of celebrated followers ; now materialism is regain- 
ing favor, and is received and supported by many 
learned unbelievers. Evidently neither pantheists 
nor materialists follow the natural light of reason ; 
they are in open revolt against it, declared rebels 
to its authority. Spiritualistic Rationalism looks 
upon them in this light as we do. There are also 
among our infidels sceptics who no longer believe 
in any certainty, and who, despairing to find truth, 
close their eyes and bury themselves in a factitious 
slumber which completes the ruin of their under- 
standing. They are sick, and imagine they will 
find health and rest in suicide. Spiritualistic 
Rationalism is certainly the most reasonable form 
of infidelity ; but its most distinguished represen- 



1 62 Why Men do not Believe, or 

tatives act with regard to the motives of credibility 
of the Christian Faith — which are as evident as 
the freedom and immortality of the soul — in the 
same way that sceptics, materialists, and pantheists 
act with regard to the evident truths of reason. 
I am aware of the fine pretexts with which they 
cloak their unbelief; but are not they themselves 
also aware of the pretexts with which the miserable 
crowd of sophists cover their daring negations ? 
Let them lay aside pretexts, let them go to the 
bottom of things, and with their hand on their 
conscience, dare to ask themselves seriously and 
sincerely why they do not believe. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 1 63 




CHAPTER III. 

// is impossible to attribute the Infidelity of the Pre- 
sent Day to the Progress of Reason and Science — 
Numerous Conversions among Learned Men — 
August in Thierry and Maine de Biran. 

EFORE pointing out in detail the real 
causes of unbelief, we will again glance 
at the pretext ordinarily employed by 
men of all kinds who reject the Christian 
Faith. All, whether sceptics, atheists, pantheists, or 
spiritualistic rationalists, pretend that our belief, 
which was perhaps good for unenlightened ages, 
cannot sustain critical inquiry in the actual condi- 
tion of the human mind ; reason goes beyond it • 
science exposes its failings and errors. Certainly 
it is strange to see a religion which has been at 
the head of civilization for eighteen centuries, and 
whose creed has been accepted, defended, glori- 
fied by the most eminent intellects and most 
illustrious philosophers, from St. Justin to Lacor- 
daire and Joseph Gorres, condemned with such 
self-sufficiency, and, we may add, with such levity- 
Will any one dare to say that there has ever been 
a society equal to the Christian society for power 
of reasoning and extent of knowledge? For the 



164 Why Men do not Believe, or 

rest, it seems to me that the historical portion of 
this work has completely disposed of the fine 
pretext put forward by rationalists of every shade. 
I protest that I can with difficulty regard the 
proud anti-Christian declarations of contemporary 
unbelief in a serious light, and were it not that 
charity for human souls obliges me to bear with 
the most unreasonable prejudices, I should be 
tempted to answer them only by contemptuous 
silence. But it is the duty of the disciples and minis- 
ters of Jesus Christ to compassionate all the intel- 
lectual and moral infirmities of their brethren. 

It is unnecessary here to examine and discuss 
directly the motives of the non-acceptance which 
Rationalism opposes, in the name of philosophy 
and science, to the teaching of the Christian 
Faith ; this has been done elsewhere. # We will 
only recall a few contemporary facts, which, in 
our opinion, demonstrate that infidelity has noth- 
ing in common with scientific progress. 

In the early ages of Christianity, pagan philoso- 
phers ridiculed the simplicity of Christians, and 
represented them as the enemies of reason, phi- 
losophy, and science. Celsus and Porphyry, not 
to mention other names, attacked the Gospel upon 
principles similar to those which Rationalism now 
employs. But these attacks did not hinder phi- 
losophers and learned men of the first order, such 
as St. Justin, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Clement of 

* Les Dogmes Catholiques^ etc. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 165 

Alexandria, Arnobius, and St. Augustine, from 
bowing their reason before the authority of the 
Gospel, and submitting their understandings to 
the Christian Faith. Who, in these days, speaks 
of the criticisms of Celsus or Porphyry? And 
since a new paganism has sought to raise its head 
in Europe, the same phenomenon is reproduced 
before our eyes. Whilst a certain number of men 
denounce the Christian Faith as the antithesis 
of philosophy and science, men of eminent minds 
are to be met with, who, after having passed the 
greater part of their lives in infidelity, return to 
this Faith, and proclaim that all the objections 
of Rationalism, which had so long held them 
back, have no pretensions to science, and rest 
upon prejudices unworthy of an earnest mind. 
This is a fact of the highest importance, which 
would alone suffice to show the puerility of infidel 
pretensions. Since the beginning of this century, 
how many learned men have been seen to desert 
the standard of Rationalism and range themselves 
under the banner of the Faith ! Nor can it be 
said of these learned converts, as it is said of us, 
that in their profession of the Faith they do but 
obey the prejudices of education ; for on entering 
the Church they have been obliged to break with 
their past life, and often with habits of mind 
contracted since the first real dawn of reason. 
Who will dare to say that men like Frederick 
Schlegel, Maine de Biran, Lherminier, Augustin 
Thierry, with many more as learned as they, were 



1 66 Why Men do not Believe, or 

strangers to the progress of modern criticism, 
or deficient in intellectual independence ? 

We will pause only at two names, Augustin 
Thierry and Maine de Biran, of whom one repre- 
sents historical, and the other philosophical criti- 
cism. 

Augustin Thierry claims a place in the first 
ranks of the restorers of historical research in 
France. No one, in the annals of literature, 
presents a more wonderful example of perseve- 
rance in labor and devotion to science. "For 
thirty years," says a priest, the friend and confi- 
dent of the illustrious historian, " it was the will 
of God to shroud this luminous understanding 
in material darkness, and imprison this energetic 
will in a motionless body. But the soul confined 
in this prison, and wearing this chain, continued its 
work and its persevering search after God and his 
truth. . . . Perfectly blind, entirely paralyzed, in- 
stead of giving way to heaviness and dulness, he 
watched, meditated, listened, and dictated ; and 
with what brilliancy, what enthusiasm ! His life 
was regulated and disciplined by the inflexible ex- 
actness of an almost religious rule."* This ener- 
getic and unconquerable mind entered on the study 
of history with the most hostile prepossessions 
against the Christian Faith, and he often evinced 



* Lettre a Mgr. l'Archeveque de Paris sur les derniers instants de 
M. Augustin Thierry par le Pere Gratry, dans Le Correspondant^ 25 
Juin, 1856. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 167 

great injustice toward the Church. But what was 
the result of his researches and meditations? It 
was the profound conviction that all the philosophi- 
cal and historical difficulties of which unbelief 
makes so much, are but phantoms which fade aw T ay 
as soon as they are exposed to the light of serious 
examination. Let us hear Father Gratry : 

" Having abandoned infidelity, as he himself has 
often told me, he soon learnt from the sincere 
study of men and of history that infidelity does 
not explain the mystery of the world, and that the 
living power which leads mankind is religion. His- 
tory further showed him that this religion can be no 
other than Christianity. But as his mind rose by 
degrees from error to truth, he thought at first 
to have found the pure doctrine of the Gospel in 
Protestantism. At that time, he sought for light at 
Geneva. 

" Then (these are his own words) I had no no- 
tion of the history of the Church. When I had 
cast my eyes over it, I saw clearly that Protestantism 
could not be the religion founded by Jesus Christ. 
Protestantism and history are wholly incompatible. 
The Protestant system has been forced to construct 
a fictitious history for its own use. I am aston- 
ished that people can still maintain themselves on 
such ground. How is it that they do not see that 
Catholicism is found entire in the first four centu- 
ries ?" Another day, quite recently, he said to one 
of the Fathers of the Oratory, M. Pinaud : " People 



1 68 Why Men do not Believe, or 

sometimes maintain — and it is a prejudice I shared 
for a long time — that the doctrine of the Church is 
formed of pieces and fragments. How false this 
is ! What admirable unity we find in her teach- 
ing ! The examination of the text soon over- 
throws this error."* 

In the rationalist world, in the midst of which 
Augustin Thierry had passed his life, people won- 
dered that so many learned men should be con- 
verted to Catholicism, and submit the reason they 
had so long held in independence to the authority 
of the Church. A week before his death this 
learned and conscientious man spoke of this fact 
to Father Gratry : " Many persons cannot under- 
stand how it happens, or whence it comes, that so 
many should return to the Catholic Church in 
spite of objections and difficulties. It is very sim- 
ple : it is because Catholicism is the Truth. It is 
the true religion of mankind. Pretended philoso- 
phical objections are not philosophical \ on the 
contrary, all the philosophy of all times and all 
places is found in the Catholic Doctrine. All truth 
centres in it. and men plunge into falsehood in pro- 
portion as they wander from it. This is why Lu- 
theranism is worth less than Anglicanism, Calvin- 
ism less than Lutheranism, Unitarianism less than 
Calvinism, and so of the rest. On the other hand, 
I see no good reason against the Catholic Reli- 

* Lettre a Mgr. PArcheveque de Paris sur les deniiers instants de M. 
Augustin Thierry par le Pere Gratry, dans Le CorresJ>ondant> 25 Juin, 

1S56. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 169 

gion. If we consider the precepts of the Church, 
they are good, reasonable, salutary, even to the 
smallest practice : none can be omitted without 
leaving cause for regret. People do wrong to he- 
sitate. They must come thither at last. True phi- 
losophy, true practical w r isdom will be sure to lead 
men thither."* 

Many false judgments, many religious errors, are 
to be found in the works of Augustin Thierry. He 
had intended to correct all that he had written 
against the Truth. Death surprised him in the 
midst of these generous labors. He said to Father 
Gratry : " I wish to correct all that I may have 
written, although in good faith, against the Truth, 
any wise. Every day and every night I implore 
God to give me time to finish this work, for it 
seems to me that in this I am working for God. I 
am often sustained and encouraged in my weari- 
ness and sleeplessness by this thought : I am 
God's workman. But do not repeat this," said he, 
with delicate modesty, " it would be presumptuous. 
I only say it to you." 

" If I am not deceived," says Father Gratry in 
conclusion, " this example will become historical ; it 
will be salutary to many ; it will raise many from 
despair \ it will cure the blindness of many."* Cer- 

* Lettre k Mgr. l'ArchevSque de Paris sur les derniers instants de M. 
Augustin Thierry par le Pere Gratry, dans Le Corresfondant, 25 Juin, 
1856. 

t Ibid. 



170 Why Men do not Believe, or 

tainly it is well calculated to dispel prejudices, and 
to raise up weak and wavering minds. 

The conversion of Maine de Biran is not less 
striking than that of Augustin Thierry. Cousin said 
of this philosopher that he was " the greatest meta- 
physician who had adorned France since Male- 
branche." We must not exaggerate : Maine de Bir- 
an is not a great metaphysician ; he does not come 
near Malebranche ; but he is an eminent psychol- 
ogist, and undoubtedly one of the most sagacious 
and profound observers known to the philosophy 
of the present century. How could a man become 
a metaphysician who had Condillac for his master, 
and who has not studied in the school of Plato and 
St. Augustine ? Maine de Biran, like all his unbe- 
lieving contemporaries, began with the philosophy 
of sensation and the degradation of materialism. 
How long a road he had to travel before he could 
reach the heights of Christian Faith ! He did 
travel this road, slowly, painfully ; and by force of 
perseverance and courage, he triumphed over the 
obstacles of every kind which he met with on this 
long journey. 

The serious observation of the phenomena of 
thought and the activity of the ego, soon showed 
Biran how empty was the philosophy of sensation. 
Materialism was vanquished, but the philosopher 
did not dream of replacing it by Christianity. He 
remained an infidel for a long time. The morality 
of stoicism pleased his noble and generous soul, 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 1 7 1 

and he would have declared himself the disciple of 
Zeno had not the feeling of reality, always so vivid 
in him, shown him the chimerical side of this proud 
philosophy. His ideas with regard to the nature 
of religion were most false. He wrote thus in 18 15 : 
" Religion is a sentiment of the soul, rather than a 
belief of the mind ; belief is subordinate to feel- 
ing."* This is exactly the inverse of the truth. 
At the same period he gave an account of the state 
of his soul and of the intellectual freedom with which 
he pursued the search after truth. " In my youth, 
and when I was prepossessed in favor of the mate- 
rialistic systems which had seduced my imagina- 
tion, I put aside all ideas which did not tend to this 
end. I was frivolous rather than insincere. But 
since my own ideas have led me far from these sys- 
tems, I have had no prepossession in favor of any 
fixed conclusion at which I would arrive, ho prepos- 
session either in favor of belief or of unbelief. If I 
find God and the true laws of the moral order, it 
will be by good fortune, and I shall be more worthy 
of credit than they who, with so many prejudices, 
tend only to establish them by their theory."f 
Alas ! this mind, which believed itself so free, obey- 
ed unwittingly a multitude of prejudices fostered 
by anti-Christian ignorance. 

Three years later, this philosopher, till then so 



* Journal Inti me de Maine Biran, p. 165. This work, edited by M. 
E. Naville, is, in truth, the history of the inward life of M. de Biran. 
\ Ibid. p. 179. 



172 Why Men do not Believe, or 

proud of his reason and moral strength, experienc- 
ed an invincible need of leaning on God. " I leant 
on myself, I reckoned on my faculties, I hoped that 
they would continually develop, I expected great 
progress from time and labor ; experience teaches 
me that I leant upon a feeble reed, agitated by the 
winds, broken by the tempest. Our faculties change 
and deceive our expectations ; we have as little 
ground to believe in their power and duration as 
in their authority. 'When a man seeks not God, 
he doth himself more harm than the whole world 
and all his enemies can do him.'" # 

This last sentence is taken from the Following 
of Christ. At the time when Biran wrote these 
lines, he was continually reading that incomparable 
book. The Pensees de Pascal and Fenelon's 
CEuvres Spirituelles were of the number of his 
favorite works. He tells us that in 1815 he was in 
the habit of beginning each day by reading a chap- 
ter of Holy Scripture. f This acquaintance with the 
doctrines revealed by God completed and correct- 
ed that work in his soul which his own moral and 
psychological experience had begun. As it hap- 
pens almost always with earnest rationalists, this 
man, formerly so proud, so confident in his powers 
of reason and will, came scarcely to believe eith- 
er in one or other; he had fallen into a kind of 
moral and intellectual depression. Men begin with 

* Journal Intime, pp. 266, 277. 

t See Life of Maine de Biran at the beginning of the Journal In" 
time,'''' p. 91. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 173 

senseless pride, and end with despair, because they 
obstinately reject all support but self, that poor, 
feeble reed which bends and breaks so easily. 
But in this sad state of weakness, Biran happily 
turned toward God, and asked for light and strength 
from him who is the Truth and the Life. He 
prayed. When a soul prays, it is saved. We can- 
not too often repeat what reason and history agree 
in attesting, that prayer is the key of Faith. When 
a man humbly confesses his own insufficiency, and 
sincerely asks God to enlighten and strengthen him, 
he is very near believing and being a Christian. 

Listen to Maine de Biran, to whom, a little while 
back, religion was but a matter of feeling, and 
Christian mysteries but dreams and chimeras : " Re- 
ligious and moral belief, which reason does not orig- 
inate, but which forms a basis and necessary start- 
ing-point of departure for reason, is now my sole 
refuge ; and I find true science precisely there, 
where formerly, with the philosophers, I saw only 
dreams and chimeras."^ " Religion alone solves 
the problems proposed by philosophy. J; f 

" The help of God," adds this undeceived ration- 
alist, "is necessary for us even in those things 
which are, or appear to be, in our own power. I 
find myself stripped of all my faculties precisely be- 
cause I relied too much on myself, and had not ac- 
quired the habit of confiding in the assistance of a 



* Journal Intime, from May 26th to June 6th, 1815, pp. 267, 268. 
t Ibid. June 30th. 



174 Why Men do not Believe, or 

superior power and asking for it by prayer, in order 
that I might be strengthened. " # 

u There are three very different kinds of disposi- 
tion of the mind and soul : the first, which is that 
of most men, consists in living exclusively in the 
world of phenomena, (that is to say, the world of 
business, pleasure, glory,) and taking them for real- 
ities. Hence arise inconstancy, disgust, perpetual 
change. The second is that of reflective minds 
who long seek for truth in themselves and in na- 
ture by separating appearances from realities, and 
who, finding no fixed basis for this truth, in despair 
fall into scepticism. Finally, the third is that of 
souls enlightened by the light ofReligion which alone 
is true and immutable. They alone have found a 
sure support ; they are strong because they believe.f 
. . . The greatest benefit Religion has bestowed 
upon us is the saving us from doubt and uncertain- 
ty, which are the greatest torment of the human 
mind, the true poison of life. In a mind destitute 
of religious belief all is undetermined, fugitive, and 
changeable, "J 

The human mind is not made to walk alone ; 
it walks securely only when leaning on Divine 
authority. It hesitates and totters even in the do- 
main where it is naturally intended to move, unless 
sustained by the hand of God. This fact of daily 
experience Maine de Biran had observed in himself, 

* Journal Intime, pp. 291, 292. 

f Ibid. pp. 3 28 > 3 2 9- % Ibtd - P- 333« 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 175 

and in the society in which he lived. We rarely meet 
with infidels, even among the best, who firmly and 
constantly adhere to the truths of natural religion. 
In the state of degradation and forfeiture in which 
man is born, he has need of the grace of God for 
two ends. First, he has need of a medicinal grace 
to cure the wounds of his nature, and to fortify his 
understanding and his will, so as to enable them, 
as Fenelon says, to attain the end of themselves, 
{alter au bout d'elles-?n$mes.) * Maine de Biran saw 
perfectly the necessity of this grace ; perhaps, as 
usually happens with minds that have relied too 
much on themselves and have been cruelly deceiv- 
ed, he exaggerated the extent of this necessity. 
Secondly, man has need of grace to raise himself 
to the supernatural order, which is, properly, the 
order of Faith, as we have already explained. 
Even before he fully embraced the Faith, our phi- 
losopher had clearly perceived the reality of this 
supernatural order, and the necessity of grace to 
attain it and maintain himself in it. No psycholo- 
gist has ever more clearly seen, what Rationalism 
obstinately denies, that man is called to live a life 
superior to the life of the senses and of mere 
reason ; that our nature, such as God has made it, 
calls for this life, but that it is not possible without 
supernatural help, which is grace. Let us hear 

* This expression, rather trivial in its form, may be rendered : "To go 
as fir as they are capable of going of themselves." 



176 Why Men do not Believe, or 

this scrupulous and profound observer of the human 
soul : 

" There are not only two opposing principles in 
man, there are three; for there are three kinds of 
life and three orders of faculties. If there were 
perfect accordance and harmony between the sen- 
sitive and active faculties which constitute man, 
there would still be a superior nature — a third life 
— which would not be satisfied, and which would 
make us feel that there is another happiness, an- 
other wisdom, another perfection beyond the great- 
est human happiness, the highest wisdom and in- 
tellectual and moral perfection of which a human 
being is susceptible. " # In the last pages of his 
Journal Jntime, Eiran returns continually to 
these three kinds of life : the life of the senses, 
the life of pure reason, the super-rational life or 
the life of faith ; he has made the distinction 
between these three kinds of life one basis of 
his Nbttveaux Essais (T Anthropologic This su- 
perior life is instilled into us by the Spirit of 
God, which acts in us and communicates with 
our soul without being confounded with it. 

" The delusion of philosophy is to consider the 
principle of spiritual life as exclusively belonging 
to the ego, and, because our ego can to a certain 
point free itself from dependence on sensible ob- 
jects, to look upon it as independent of that other 
superior influence, whence it receives all that light 
which it does not originate. ... I was formerly 

* Journal Intime, p. 399. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 177 

puzzled to understand how the Spirit of Truth 
could be in us without being ourselves, without 
identifying itself with our own spirit, our ego. Now 
I comprehend the interior communication of a Spirit 
superior to us, which speaks to us, which we hear 
within us, which vivifies and fertilizes our spirit 
without being confounded with it. . . . This 
communication of the Spirit with our spirit — when 
we know how to call him to us, or to prepare for 
him a fit dwelling within us — is not only of faith, 
it is a veritable psychological fact. 

" The whole doctrine of Christianity is comprised 
in love. When we have felt within ourselves the 
vivifying influence of the Divine Spirit, it is natu- 
ral that we should love him, that we should invoke 
him without ceasing, as the food, support, principle 
of our life ; that we should love him more than 
ourselves, for from him we hold an existence 
superior to that of self, and it is by love alone that 
we unite ourselves to the Spirit." # Rationalism 
denies this action of the Spirit of God in us, and 
the life which that action inspires and nourishes ; 
but this denial, contradicted moreover by the prin- 
ciples of true philosophy, cannot prevail against a 
fact which all Christians experience, any more than 
the denial of a blind man would prevail against 
the fact that there is light, which all see whose 
eyes are open. " It is impossible," again says 
Maine de Biran, "to deny to the true believer 

* Journal I nUme^ pp. 405, 410, 411. 



178 Why Men do not Believe, or 

who experiences in himself what he calls the effects 
of grace ; who finds the repose and peace of his soul 
in the intervention of certain ideas or intellectual 
acts of faith, hope, and love ; and who is thence 
able to satisfy his mind with regard to problems 
which no other system can solve ; it is impossible, 
I say, to dispute what he experiences, and conse- 
quently not to recognize the true foundation there 
is in him, or in his religious belief, for those con- 
ditions of soul which constitute his consolation and 
his happiness." # 

The following lines are the last which occur in 
the Journal Intime of Maine de Biran, and they 
deserve the attention of all men who think them- 
selves strong enough to walk alone, and who proud- 
ly repulse the hand which God offers them by his 
Son Jesus Christ : " There should always be two, 
and we may say of man, even the individual man, 
vcz soli ! If a man is carried away by the unruly 
affections which absorb him, he can form no just 
judgment either of outward objects or of himself; 
if he abandon himself to them, he is unhappy and 
degraded, vcz soli! A man may be ever so strong 
in reasoning powers and in human wisdom, but unless 
he feel himself sustained by a power and reason 
higher than himself, he will be unhappy ; he may 
impose on others, he cannot impose on himself. 
True strength, true wisdom consists in walking in 
the presence of God, and in feeling his supporting 

* Journal Intime, p. 405. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 179 

hand, otherwise vce soli 7 The stoic is either alone, 
or with the belief in his own strength, which de- 
ceives him ; the Christian walks in the presence of 
God and with God, by the Mediator whom he has 
taken for the guide and companion of his present 
and future life." 

These lines, the truth of which every sincere and 
upright mind will attest, were penned by Maine de 
Biran on the 17th May, 1824. Two months later 
he died, with sentiments of lively faith, consoled 
and fortified by the presence of our Divine Medi- 
ator, who came to visit him in the Sacrament of 
his love. 

Let superficial and vain minds, who so presum- 
tuously take their stand on the progress of reason, 
then see whither it led one of the deepest thinkers 
of this age. 

In the face of such examples, how can the ab- 
surd prejudice be explained which maintains that 
Christian Faith is incompatible with the progress 
of reason and science ? We have seen, and still 
see at this moment, learned men, men of the highest 
intellect, the most illustrious savants of France, 
Germany, England, and America, return to the 
Faith which never grows old, and, after having 
scrutinized all, tried all, proclaim that this Faith 
is the torch of science, the infallible guide of true 
progress ; and are not those who have always kept 
the faith of their baptism as strong in reasoning, 
as well informed in the progress of science, as the 



180 Why Men do not Believe, or 

unbelievers amongst whom they live ? Let men 
cease to justify their infidelity by seeking refuge in 
a pretended incompatibility between Catholic 
Faith and modern science. Such an excuse is un- 
worthy of a sincere mind. The real causes of 
infidelity are not to be found in the progress of 
information. We will now endeavor to show what 
they are. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 1 8 1 




CHAPTER IV. 

Real Causes of Infidelity — First Cause, Ignorance of 
Religion. 

AITH, as we have seen, is an act of the 

understanding, but an act prescribed by 
the will — a free act. The cause of un- 
belief may be in the understanding or 
in the will, or in both these faculties combined ; 
that is to say, in the whole soul. We will begin, 
then, with the understanding : we will seek to dis- 
cover how and in what degree the understanding 
acts upon the influence of the will ; this will lead 
us to study the state of the will, and with that, the 
state of the whole soul in infidels. 

The first, and most common cause of infidelity, 
is ignorance of those truths which are the objects 
of faith. People know nothing of religion; they 
do not know what the Catholic Church — which 
keeps the Faith and prolongs the presence of Jesus 
Christ upon this earth — believes and teaches. In 
most cases, such ignorance is not wholly unprece- 
dented. In the early ages of Christianity, many 
pagans, and among them many of the intellectual 
men of the time, reproached the disciples of the 
Incarnate Word with adoring the head of an ass ! 



1 82 Why Men do not Believe, or 

Is it possible that after eighteen hundred years of 
Christian civilization, in a society born and nour- 
ished in the lap of the Church, men are still to be 
met with who heap upon us reproaches equally 
senseless ? We see beside us learned men ; men 
who have conscientiously studied the religions of 
Greece, of ancient Rome, of Persia, India, Egypt, 
and who yet speak of the religion of Jesus Christ, 
of the religion which has civilized Europe and is 
the light of the world, as a man born blind might 
speak of colors. Surely this phenomenon, which 
we daily witness, is one of the most alarming mys- 
teries of the moral world. 

Religious ignorance, as a cause of infidelity, 
shows itself in various degrees. There is total ig- 
norance, and there is partial ignorance. But the 
greater number of unbelievers are totally ignorant 
of the Christian Religion, and have scarcely a 
vague notion of religion in general. We have 
seen that at the time when the soul of Maine de 
Biran began seriously to turn toward God, he 
looked upon religion as a matter of feeling in 
which reason had no part. Before that time, the 
thoughts of the philosopher had never even glanced 
at the religious order ; to him that order had no 
existence. As long as Augustin Thierry was an 
infidel he studied history without any regard to re- 
ligion — the only thing which can explain the his- 
tory of the world. And when his eyes began to 
open — when he had a glimpse of the part assigned 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity, 183 

to religion, and thought he saw that religion could 
only be Christianity, he did not even then suspect 
that religious truth might be found in the Catholic 
Church. He knew nothing of the Church, or only 
knew her through the caricatures of her enemies. 
This man, who was so eager for knowledge, so curi- 
ous in research, had never read with sincere atten- 
tion a history of the Church, nor a complete and 
exact exposition of Catholic Doctrine. How can 
men believe, when they know nothing of what they 
ought to believe ? 

M. Droz, a member of the French Academy, 
admits that he became an infidel, not in conse- 
quence of a serious examination of Christian 
Truth, but without any examination ; and because 
he was ill-informed with regard to the principles and 
doctrines of the Christian Religion, ignorantly and 
unreservedly accepting all the opinions of infide- 
lity. This was an unhappy age, in which many 
marvellously gifted youths became, in some sort, 
the necessary prey of irreligion as soon as they 
entered the world : many, alas ! receiving their 
first lessons of infidelity at the domestic hearth. 
Droz had received a Christian education ; he had 
gone through his Humanities and course of philo- 
sophy in a college where the doctrines and prac- 
tices of Christianity were held in honor. Still he 
was almost wholly ignorant of religion, and the 
first assaults of infidelity destroyed his belief. He 
did not, however, sink to the depth of moral and 



184 Why Men do not Believe, or 

religious degradation as so many others had done ; 
his noble mind, whilst it rejected Christian Revela- 
tion, preserved its belief in God, in the immortali- 
ty of the soul, and in the moral law; he was one 
of the most upright and accomplished types of 
spiritualistic Rationalism. Let us listen to his 
confession ; it will teach us how it happened that 
so many young men, at the beginning of this cen- 
tury, became infidels, and how it happens, doubt" 
less, that so many become infidels at this day : 

" I was almost always inattentive to religious 
instruction, and was far from having given those 
solid foundations to my belief which the times in 
which we were living required. The philosophy of 
the eighteenth century was predominant. Deists, 
in order to exercise influence, had no need either 
of profound learning or close logic ; irreligion was 
the fashion — infidelity and indifference seemed to 
be in the air we breathed. Whilst I was occupy- 
ing myself with literature, and prudently descend- 
ing from poetry to prose, I constantly heard so 
many voices repeat with full conviction, 'The 
cause of Christianity has been judged and is lost 
for ever/ that I never doubted that I must start 
from this opinion as from a certain fact, when I 
would treat of religion with the enlightened men 
of the time. Thus did the youth of that time de- 
cide. God/' adds this excellent man, " might have 
punished me for my infidelity more severely than 
he has done • he might have suffered me to fall 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 185 

into the degradation of the sophists, who seek in 
their pitiful pride to maintain that God does not 
exist, that man acts under the dominion of fate, 
and that morality is but a fable invented by inge- 
nious men to dupe the weak and foolish. I was 
spared this excess of degradation ; God, whose 
goodness surpasses our sins ; God, to whom I owe 
so many acts of thanksgiving; God has never 
wholly abandoned me."* 

Is it credible that this upright rationalist who 
was absorbed in the study of moral philosophy, 
and who read assiduously the essays of Montaigne, 
the Tuscnlan Disputations and De Officiis of 
Cicero, the Dream of Scipio, Plutarch , that he 
should never have dreamt of reading the Gospel, 
nor any of the great Christian moralists who have 
drawn freely from that incomparable source ? In 
his eyes Christianity was irrevocably condemned, 
and all Christian literature was suppressed by the 
same blow. In this way did he understand and 
apply free examination. 

I cannot forbear quoting one more page from 
the instructive Aveux of this once infidel moral- 
ist. " I did not lose time in seeking for arguments 
against Christianity ; what was the use of doing 
so ? Others had taken this trouble, and as far as I 
was concerned, the question was settled. In all 
my projects, that which occupied me most was the 

* Aveux (Tun Philosophe Chretien, by Joseph Droz, of the French 
Academy, and of the Academy of Moral and Political Science, pp. 13-15. 



1 86 Why Men do not Believe, or 

desire to succeed in self-improvement. In spite of 
my love of literature and philosophy — far from 
paying a fanatical homage to Voltaire, the patri- 
arch of irreligion, I was disgusted by his cynicism 
■ — I was grieved to behold an illustrious poet dis- 
grace his genius by a parody of the history of the 
angelic heroine of France .... The so-called 
Philosophy of History excited still more painful 
feelings. In this libel against humanity, man is 
represented as a mass of vice, which renders him 
at once hateful and contemptible : what can be 
done with such a being ? I loved liberty ; I de- 
manded it for all nations capable of understanding 
it • and when I saw the enthusiastic admirers of 
Voltaire proclaim themselves the champions of 
public liberty, the incoherency of their ideas con- 
founded me. If man is made up of the tiger and 
the monkey, why should we speak of giving him 
liberty? On the contrary, bring a muzzle and 
chains ; defend the world from the crimes of such 
a monster." # 

We perceive that Droz, although an infidel, was 
not a follower of Voltaire. He was not a fanatic 
in his irreligion ; he was an upright, moderate ra- 
tionalist, striving to judge of men and things by 
the light of calm serene reason. But he knew very 
little of the Christian Religion, and unwittingly 
condemned it on the word of those disciples of Vol- 

* Aveux cTun Philosophe Chr&tien> pp. 17, 18. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 187 

taire whom he held in such slight estimation. 
Question those learned and distinguished men who 
in our own days have passed from Rationalism or 
Protestantism to the Catholic Faith, ask them why 
they rejected, and sometimes with supreme con- 
tempt, the teaching of the Church ? Most of them 
will answer that they were ill-informed in regard to 
that teaching ; many, that they were wholly igno- 
rant of it. 

If such was the religious ignorance of unbeliev- 
ers as earnest as Maine de Biran, Augustin Thier- 
ry, and Droz, what must we think of the ordinary 
run of infidels ? It is a fact, of which the infidel 
press alone gives mournful evidence, that the gen- 
erality of them do not even suspect what the Cath- 
olic Religion may be. Ignorance in religious mat- 
ters is truly a phenomenon. 

Still a certain number of men are to be met with 
among infidels who are not ignorant of Catholic 
belief so far as this. They have some notion of 
the Christian Revelation and of the doctrines which 
it contains, they even find things in the life and 
teaching of the Church which command their ad- 
miration, but, seen under a false light, one point or 
other of the Catholic Creed or Catholic discipline 
stops them, and they remain in their unbelief. 
Some minds reject the Christian Faith because the 
mystery of the Trinity or of original sin shocks 
their reason. Ask them how they understand the 
doctrine of the Church on these two dogmas, 



1 88 Why Men do not Believe, or 

which in our own opinion shed so valuable a light 
over history and philosophy, and you will at once 
perceive that they attach to these great mysteries a 
sense really repugnant to reason, and which has 
nothing in common with the Catholic sense ■ men 
create phantoms for themselves, and then shrink 
from them in horror. How many infidels impute 
to the Church on the subject of original sin not 
only what she does not teach, but what she has form- 
ally condemned ! Then they draw consequences 
from this travesty of the Catholic dogma which are 
really monstrous, and which, if they were legiti- 
mately deduced from it, would, I admit, suffice to 
refute it in the eyes of all reasonable beings. 
What just and generous soul, they exclaim, would 
not shudder at that necessary consequence of the 
dogma of original sin — that infants who die unbap- 
tized are punished eternally in hell like the great- 
est criminals ? Were such a consequence well 
founded, I confess that I should be deeply disturb- 
ed by it. But in what General Council, in what 
Papal Bull, in what Scriptural or traditional source, 
in the writings of what authorized theologian, have 
they seen that such is the bearing of the Catholic 
dogma? We most emphatically deny that the 
Church anywhere teaches that children who die 
with the sole taint of original sin are punished in 
the same way as men who have been guilty of 
grave personal sin, and who quit this life in impen- 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 1 89 

itence ; the Church does not even teach that such 
children are positively unhappy.^ 

There is a simple and supremely reasonable 
Catholic maxim, which is a kind of bugbear to 
many minds which in other respects seem to be 
well enough disposed toward the Church ; it is the 
maxim — No salvation out of the Church. But I 
repeat that this is but a necessary application of 
the most evident principles of reason, as soon as 
men admit that there is a religion revealed by God ; 
nevertheless, we frequently see learned men who 
reject Catholicism, alleging this maxim as their 
excuse — they discover in it, what no Catholic theo- 
logian has ever seen, the wholesale and blind con- 
demnation of all who do not belong to the external 
communion of the Church. Were such the mean- 
ing of this dogma, I do not hesitate to declare that 
it would be as absurd as it is odious ; but thank 
God, it bears no such interpretation. Sometimes 
it is a simple point of Catholic discipline which 
disturbs and arrests certain minds. They only half 
understand it — they only know it according to the 
estimation of persons who are hostile, or at least 
strangers, to the Church ; but there they stop and 
gravely declare that, although Catholicism may have 
good points, it cannot be accepted as a whole. 

How terrible a thing is prejudice ! We Catholics 



* The reader may consult Les Dogmes Catholiques, on the nature 
and consequences of original sin in this world and the next, etc., torn. ii. 
liv. ix. 



190 Why Men do not Believe, or 

are often reproached with obeying prejudices. I 
admit that in some respects we do obey prejudices, 
but as a celebrated controversialist of the seven- 
teenth century* has remarked, there are reasonable 
prejudices and prejudices which are extremely un- 
reasonable. Ask those who were formerly unbe- 
lievers — but whose firm and generous faith now re- 
joices the Church of God — whether they were not 
slaves of most blind prejudice, when, like you, they 
rejected the Catholic Faith? You will see what their 
answer will be. Why, then, do not you, who love 
truth and admire Christianity, if certain difficulties 
present themselves, ask an explanation from the 
teachers of that great religion which, for eighteen 
hundred years, has been the consolation and glory 
of the greatest geniuses of whom the world can 
boast? 

Why do you not imitate the noble and generous 
mind of whom I spoke just now — why not go as he 
did and confide your doubts, your hesitations, your 
difficulties, to one of your brethren whose charge it 
is to explain the teaching of this religion ? What is 
there opposed to your dignity in such a course ? 
Listen to the confessions of Droz, deploring the 
fault he committed in seeking to escape from his 
ignorance and his doubts without having consulted 
any one : " When I wished to begin the examina- 
tion of Christianity, I had been so much accustomed 

* Pellisson. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 191 

to rely on my own light and guidance, that in my 
presumptuous ignorance I sought counsel of none 
to direct my researches. It is easy to see the utili- 
ty of religion — its benefits are before our eyes ; but 
instruction is necessary for the consideration of re- 
ligion in itself, and to bring its truths home to our- 
selves. It was indispensable that a man who had 
been enlightened by its study should supply the 
light of which I was devoid. I knew a priest held 
in universal veneration ; in my eagerness to escape 
from doubt I decided that I would see him the very 
next morning. ... I opened my heart to him ; I 
revealed to him my thoughts, my agitation, my de- 
sires, in all sincerity. I finished by saying to him : 
6 I owe to the proofs afforded by my feelings, the de- 
sire that religion should be true. Finish by con- 
veying to my understanding the entire conviction 
which my heart craves. But if, instead of seeking 
to convince my reason, you command me to believe 
— if I must sacrifice the noblest gift I have received 
from Heaven — I have nothing more to ask you, 
we cannot understand one another/ "* Thanks to 
the instructions of the priest, this suspicious ration- 
alist soon learnt that the Christian Faith does not 
sacrifice reason, but takes it for granted, purifies, 
strengthens, extends, and elevates it ; he understood 
that Faith demands but one sacrifice, the sacrifice 
of pride, which he confounded with reason. 

* A veu.x (Vun Philosophe Chretien, pp. 65, 66. 



1 92 Why Men do not Believe, or 




CHAPTER V. 

Causes of Religious Ignorance — 7? is often Volun- 
tary, Culpable Ignorance — levity and Moral In- 
difference of most Infidels. 

jT is a wide-spread opinion in these days 
that error is not culpable, and that no one 
is responsible for the religious ignorance 
in which he lives. This opinion is supreme- 
ly absurd, and shows too plainly the general decline 
of reason. Were it true, we should be obliged to 
declare that man is not a free agent, and that the 
truth has no claim upon his understanding. Our 
understanding, considered in itself, and apart from 
the will, is undoubtedly not free, but by its nature it 
is under the command of the will • it is placed un- 
der the direction of the will and participates in its 
freedom. Let it never be forgotten that the will is 
the central power and ruler of the soul, that from 
the will the whole soul must receive its impulse and 
direction, that it is made to rule and direct the 
movements of the understanding as well as the 
movements of the feelings and affections-— every- 
thing must depend upon the will, and the will is re- 
sponsible for everything. Therefore, it cannot be 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 193 

too often repeated, it is the will that really makes 
the man. Let no one say that all conditions of the 
understanding, all ignorance in matters of religion, 
are things indifferent in themselves ; our intellectual 
state depends in a very great measure upon out 
will, and the ignorance of which we are speaking 
may be voluntary, and consequently culpable. Man 
is bound to know the truth, to adhere to it, to sub- 
mit to it ; whoever wills not seriously and sincerely 
to make use of the means at his disposal to arrive 
at the truth, fails in his duty, and deserves punish- 
ment for his ignorance and his errors. 

All ignorance of the religion revealed by God is 
assuredly not culpable. There are many souls to 
whom it is morally impossible to recognize the 
truth of the Church's teaching, either by reason of 
the condition in which they are living, or the at- 
mosphere of prejudice which enveloped their early 
education, or of other circumstances absolutely in- 
dependent of their will. God will not condemn 
these souls for that of which they are ignorant. 
Pius IX. recently wrote as follows to the Bishops 
of Italy : " We know and you know that they who 
are unavoidably ignorant of our most Holy Reli- 
gion, and who, carefully observing the natural law 
and the precepts engraved by God in the hearts of 
all men, and willing to obey God, lead an honest, 
upright life, may, with the help of Divine light and 
grace, acquire eternal life ; for God, who perfectly 
sees, searches, and knows the minds, souls, 



194 Why Men do not Believe, or 

thoughts, and actipns of all men, in his sovereign 
goodness and clemency, permits not that he who is 
not guilty of a voluntary fault should suffer eternal 
punishment."* It is a question of sincerity of 

which God is the judge. 

But religious ignorance frequently depends on 
moral causes which must be studied, and this study 
will afford us occasion to penetrate more profound- 
ly into the mystery of unbelief. Infidelity is a 
complex fact in which all the powers of the soul 
have a share. As we proceed, we shall be more 
and more convinced of this fundamental truth. 
We will begin by pointing out a general condition 
of the soul very common among unbelievers ; next, 
we will show by what means many souls descend 
all the steps of unbelief till they lose themselves 
in Materialism, or perish in the helplessness of 
scepticism, or the aberrations of Pantheism. We 
will then return to the consideration of the moral 
obstacles which the Christian Faith meets with in 
the souls of the better class of infidels — of those 
who admit the fundamental dogmas of natural re- 
ligion. 

Levity of mind, moral dissipation, a culpable in- 
difference to religion, is the ordinary source of re- 
ligious ignorance and one of the most common 
causes of infidelity. What are the greater number 
of men who do not believe doing ? What is the 

* Encyclical Letter to the Cardinals. Archbishops, and Bishops of Italy 
August 10, 1863. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 195 

usual condition of their souls ? The Apostle St. 
John wrote to the first disciples of the Gospel : 
" Love not the world, nor the things that are in the 
world. . . . All that is in the world is the con- 
cupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of 
the eyes, and the pride of life."* The world, in 
the language of Scripture, denotes men " who pre- 
fer visible and transitory things to those that are 
invisible and eternal. "f This world ever exists, and 
although the triple concupiscence which the Apostle 
points out has in some respects diminished during 
the long reign of the Christian Faith, it still dis- 
plays itself in the world, and still brings forth 
therein the fruit of death. Are not the pleasures 
of sense, riches, honors, the sole object of desire 
and pursuit to the ordinary run of unbelievers? 
Material interests, considered under their diverse 
forms, absorb them wholly. They occupy them- 
selves only with perishable goods ; this present life 
is everything to them. Probably they do not deny 
that there is a future life, but they think nothing 
about it; it is an item which does not enter into 
their calculations. To succeed in the world, to 
satiate themselves with riches, pleasure, and, if pos- 
sible, with glory, or at any rate with honors, is their 
sole care. Some give themselves up with a kind 
of frenzy to sensual enjoyment, a great number 
exercise a kind of half restraint upon themselves, 



* 1 John ii. 15, 16. 

t Bossuet, Traite de la Concupiscence ', chap. i. 



196 Why Men do not Believe, or 

and at least respect decency, though their view ex- 
tends not beyond the narrow horizon of this earth. 
With such dispositions, men are capable of sinking 
to the lowest depths of degradation, but they will 
not raise themselves to the heights of the moral 
order to seek the light of truth. Such men as 
these do not even dream of studying religion. 

Pascal said of the few infidels of his time : " We 
know well enough how men of this kind act. They 
think they have made great efforts at self-instruc- 
tion if they have spent a few hours in reading the 
Scriptures, and have questioned some ecclesiastic 
on the truths of Faith. Afterward they boast of 
having made a fruitless search in books and among 
men. But, in truth, I cannot refrain from telling 
them, as I have often done, that such negligence is 
intolerable. The trifling interests of some stranger 
are not in question here \ the stake is ourselves and 
our all." # " This negligence in a manner which 
concerns themselves, their eternity, their all, irri- 
tates more than it moves me ; it astonishes me, it 
alarms me. To me it is monstrous. "f What 
would the religious and austere solitary of Port 
Royal say if he lived in our days ? It is no longer 
a question with the multitude of unbelievers of em- 
ploying some hours in reading the Scriptures 
and questioning some ecclesiastic on the truths of 
Faith ; they read nothing, they question no one, 

* Pensees, part ii. art. 2 : Necessity d'etudier la Religion, 
t Ibid. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 197 

they take no thought of religion. There is a levity 
and indifference about them inexplicable in reason- 
able beings. " There must be strange disorder in 
a man's nature who can live in such a state, still 
more when he can pride himself on it." # And yet 
the greater number do really pride themselves on 
it. They despise us who believe ; they denounce 
us as the enemies of reason, as men whose under- 
standings are enslaved; whilst they look upon 
themselves as reason personified, claim for them- 
selves alone liberty of thought, and proudly call 
themselves free-thinkers. From the time of La 
Bruyere infidels have called themselves esprits forts ; 
this title called forth from the immortal author of 
Les Caracteres the following reflection : " Do our 
esprits forts know that they are called thus in 
irony ?f God forbid that I should wish to offend 
any one, but I cannot help seeing the most bitter 
irony in the name of free-thinkers as given to infi- 
dels. It is a fact that the generality of them think 
neither freely nor servilely ; they do not think at 
all. Permit me to say frankly that there are infi- 
nitely more free-livers than free-thinkers among the 
enemies of the Christian Faith. If some few (and 
they are the exception) really think, I know of 
nothing less free than their thoughts ; they are the 
slaves of the blindest and most absurd prejudices ; 
they accept, with a truly blind faith, all the judg- 
ments which condemn Christianity. An infidel ex- 

* Pascal. f Les Caracteres, chap. xvi. 



198 Why Men do not Believe, or 

amining the bases of the Christian Religion, sin- 
cerely, without prepossession, with conscientious 
freedom, is the rarest thing in the world \ when a 
man has done that, he is very near renouncing infi- 
delity and embracing the Faith. But, I repeat, 
this multitude of worshippers of free examination, 
and these so-called free-thinkers examine nothing 
and never think for themselves. They repeat lofty 
maxims, write pompous formulae, for the most part 
like parrots, and without attaching any meaning to 
them • this is the power and freedom of their 
thought in the domain of morals and religion. 
They affirm with imperturbable assurance that they 
are for the independence of reason, for the eman- 
cipation of the human mind, for progress, for the 
liberty of nations ; according to them, the Catholic 
Faith is the antithesis of these beautiful and noble 
things. But do not ask them what they mean by 
the independence of reason, the emancipation of 
the human mind, and other articles of the rational- 
ist programme ; they are words which they repeat 
by heart and without having ever examined their 
true meaning. Above all, do not ask them in what 
the Catholic Faith, which is professed by the most 
independent, purest, and most eminent men of our 
days, as it was in the days of St. Augustine — do not 
ask them in what that Faith opposes the freedom 
of reason and shackles social progress. They 
have never thought of it ; they will give you no 
other answer than the eternal sin^-song of accusa- 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity, 199 

tions a hundred times refuted, and formulae as new 
as the formula which comprises all the religious 
science of the disciples of Mohammed : ' God is 
God, and Mohammed is his prophet.' " 

We will close this chapter with one general ob- 
servation. The meaning of words must be re- 
stored. What man in his senses would say that 
moral freedom consists in exemption from the rule 
of virtue ? How, then, can men place intellectual 
liberty in exemption from the rule of truth ? For 
pity's sake, do not confound liberty with libertinism. 
There is a libertinism of thought as well as a lib- 
ertinism of morals. To live regardless of the law 
of virtue is moral libertinism ; to think and speak 
without regard for the law of Truth is intellectual 
libertinism. 

We will now see whither either one or the other 
may lead. 



200 Why Men do not Believe, or 




CHAPTER VI. 

Materialism — On what it Rests — The Soul Materi- 
alized — How the Soul arrives at this State, and 
what Moral Treatment must be Followed to Raise 
it from this Degradation . 

j|HE ordinary result of the intellectual 
levity and moral dissipation which we 
have just described is to materialize the 
soul and to lead it to believe only in sensi- 
ble realities. There is a twofold materialism — a 
dogmatic materialism which denies positively the 
existence of the soul and of God, and a practical ma- 
terialism which denies neither the one nor the other 
expressly, but neglects and forgets them both. The 
moral condition, of which we have just spoken, can- 
not be distinguished from this practical materialism. 
We will now speak of dogmatic materialism, proper- 
ly so called. 

This materialism, which for a short time was ig- 
nominiously driven from the schools of infidel phi- 
losophy, has reappeared in the last few years, and 
has again acquired considerable influence. It is 
daily gaining ground in the domain of natural 
science, and many cultivated minds are ranging 
themselves under its banner. Now materialism is 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 201 

radical infidelity — it is the denial of the very foun- 
dation on which all religion rests, and on which the 
Christian Faith in particular must take its stand. 
How can a soul come to ignore and deny its own 
existence ? How can it sink to this intellectual and 
moral degradation ? The key to this mystery must 
be sought for in human liberty, which is the princi- 
ple of all degradation and all elevation. We are 
free and imperfect beings ; we may refuse our ad- 
hesion to truths of the moral order, and our soul 
may so far blind itself — not all at once, but by dint 
of a thousand weak and base acts — that at length 
it will come to ignore God, and no longer be able 
to discern itself. Men reach this point by two 
roads: by libertinism of life, and also, whilst pre- 
serving a comparatively virtuous exterior, by that 
religious indifference which enervates the best part 
of the soul and ends by extinguishing its life. 

Our soul has a direct and immediate view of it- 
self — it has a perception of itself, the manifesta- 
tions of its life, its understanding, its sensibility, 
and its will ; it perceives God and the moral order 
by evidence which seems irresistible. How then is 
materialism possible? It arises from the moral 
condition of the soul, it comes from this, that the 
state of our understanding depends in great mea- 
sure on the state of our will and affections. All 
our faculties are mutually affected, and exercise an 
incessant action upon one another. Nothing is 
easier than to refute a materialist, but it is not so 



202 Why Men do not Believe, or 

easy to cure him. This cure is only possible by 
means of a moral treatment which is occasionally 
very painful. 

There are souls so buried in matter, so material- 
ized, that the realities of the moral world have no 
longer any meaning to them, but appear to them 
the most inexplicable chimera. The most sublime 
religious symbols reveal absolutely nothing to 
them : in the most touching ceremonies of religion 
they behold merely external things, having no 
moral significance. A Russian of great distinction, 
who was converted a few years ago to the Catholic 
Faith, attests this of himself. M. Schouvaloff had 
in his youth lost all religious belief; not only did 
he no longer believe the Gospel, but he no longer 
recognized the existence either of God or of his own 
soul. Teachers of philosophy had confirmed him 
in his denial of the Truth. He passed several 
years in this state. In the history of his life, he 
says : " As I finish the account of this first part of 
my spiritual existence, I ask myself how it happened 
that neither my heart nor my mind was ever 
touched, when, during my sojourn in Italy, and par- 
ticularly in Rome, I happened to be present at re- 
ligious ceremonies. I cannot comprehend my in- 
difference in this respect, nor how it happened that 
no serious idea ever came to me — to me who be- 
lieved myself to be a thoughtful man — at the sight 
of things that had been objects of veneration for 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 203 

so many centuries, and that to men belonging to 
all classes of society, to every degree of intelli- 
gence. It is true that I never entered a church 
except out of curiosity or from some other frivo- 
lous motive, but still I went into the churches ; I 
was present at glorious and beautiful ceremonies — 
my eyes were sometimes arrested by ancient sculp- 
tures or magnificent pictures, the figures of which, 
seen through clouds of incense, appeared animated 
with life ; everywhere was to be seen the image of 
thy Holy Mother, surrounded with innumerable 
ex voto, tokens of hope, of sorrow, of gratitude, and 
of love ; the most profound feelings of the heart 
had left their traces on her altars. Moreover, I 
heard words, sublime in their simplicity, mingling 
with the music of angels ; the air of the Basilicas 
appeared to me to be impregnated with the senti- 
ment of Faith ; here, a whole people listened mo- 
tionless to the voice of the preacher ; there, the 
faithful were confessing their sins ; others, with 
silent devout recollection, were receiving the Di- 
vine Body; prostrate priests adored the Sacred 
Host; an old man, the Father of Christians 
washed the feet of a few poor men, or gave his bene- 
diction to the city and to the world. . . . And 
in presence of these grand spectacles not a thought, 
not a question ! I beheld them with the indiffer- 
ence of idiotcy. . . . One sense was wanting 
— the spiritual sense, the divine sense ! My body 



204 Why Men do not Believe, or 

was present, but my soul was elsewhere, . . 
it slept."* 

This is truly the condition of a materialized soul ; 
in it the moral sense is, as it were, extinct. Still, 
the root of this sense is alive, but is stifled by for- 
eign elements. To restore its vigor, these elements 
must be removed, and the soul must be replaced in 
its true position. This is the object of the moral 
treatment of which I was speaking just now. 

Plato was perfectly well acquainted with materi- 
alized minds ; they abounded in pagan society. 
He has depicted them in several passages of his 
Dialogues, but particularly in the celebrated al- 
legory of the cavern. The great moralist compares 
this visible world to a subterranean cave, in which 
men who have been in chains since infancy behold 
the shadows of objects through an opening and by 
the pale glimmer of a fire ; the captives imagine 
that these shadows are the only realities. " Now 
see," continues Plato, " what must naturally happen 
if they be delivered from their chains and cured of 
their error. Let one of these captives be unbound : 
let him be compelled to stand up at once, to turn 
his head, to walk, and to turn to the light. He 
will do all this with infinite trouble ; the light will 
hurt his eyes, and dazzle him so as to prevent his 
discerning the objects whose shadows he formerly 
beheld. What think you might he reply to him 

* Ma Conversion etma Vocation, by P. SchouvalofF, Barnabite, pp. 81- 
83, Paris, 1859. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 20 5 

who should tell him that up to this time he had 
seen only phantoms, but that now he has more real 
objects, objects more approaching to the truth, be- 
fore his eyes ? Suppose he were now pulled out of 
the cavern and dragged by a rude steep path to the 
light of the sun, what a punishment would it be to 
him ! how great would be his fury ! And when he 
should have reached the light of day, would not 
his eyes be dazzled by the brightness ? Could he 
see anything of the crowd of objects which we call 
real beings ? At first he would not be able to do 
so. Doubtless time would be necessary to accus- 
tom him to it." But when he had become accus- 
tomed to the sight of objects, and to the contem- 
plation of the sun which gives them light, " if he 
happened to call to mind his first dwelling, the 
companions of his slavery, and the idea which they 
had there of wisdom, would he not rejoice in his 
own change ? would he not compassionate their 
misfortune ? Most assuredly he would. Do you 
think he would still be jealous of the honors, 
praise, and rewards given to him who was most 
prompt in seizing the shadows as they passed, or 
who called to mind most accurately which shadows 
went before, which followed, which went together, 
and thus was the most skilful in guessing the time 
of their appearance ; or that he envied their condi- 
tion who were most powerful and most honored in 
that prison? Would he not prefer passing his life, 
as is related of Achilles by Homer, in the service 



206 Why Men do not Believe, or 

of a poor laborer, and suffer everything rather than 
resume his former condition, with its illusions ? I 
doubt not that he would be ready to suffer every- 
thing rather than again live in that manner. . . . 
Well, my dear Glaucus, that is the precise image 
of our human state. The subterraneous cave is 
this visible world ; the fire by which it is lighted is 
the light of the sun ; the captive who soars to a 
higher region and who contemplates it is the soul 
raising itself to the sphere of intelligence. " # 

The materialized soul delights in this kingdom 
of shadows, which it takes for the only realities, 
and is irritated by any proposal to quit this world 
of phantoms. Only at the price of a generous ef- 
fort can it be snatched from them. The fulfilment 
of a moral condition must be the first step ; the 
soul must purify itself and disengage itself as 
much as possible from the mass of gross images 
which defile its sight and hinder it from contem- 
plating the true light. In the Phcedo, Socrates, 
discoursing on his approaching death, and seeking 
to console his friends, defines the purification of 
the soul to be a kind of anticipated death. " Does 
not the purification of the soul/ 5 he says, " consist 
in separating it as much as possible from the 
body ; in accustoming it to be shut up in it- 
self, to be recollected in itself, and to live as 
much as possible . . . alone and in itself, 
disengaged from the shackles of the body? 

* Rejubl. lib. vii. 514-51S. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity, 207 

. . . Without the least doubt this is so."^ " Now 
what is death," adds Socrates, "if not the com- 
plete separation of the soul and body? 
The philosopher who seeks to purify his soul 
exercises himself in dying, and philosophy 
is an apprenticeship of death, "f The illustrious 
sage of Athens had but a glimpse of this sublime 
thought, which was to be fully comprehended and 
realized — free from all admixture of error — by 
Christianity alone. 

Plato recognizes three distinct principles in the 
soul of man : the superior or rational part of the 
soul is the seat of the understanding ; the inferior 
part is the seat of sensation and material pleas- 
ures ; the middle part is the seat of passions some 
what more elevated, such as anger, pride, and am- 
bition. $ For the man who seeks truth he teaches 
the necessity of subjecting the lower and middle 
parts of the soul to the superior, so that, free from 
all shackles, it may more easily turn to the contem- 
plation of that which is. " Have you not yet re- 
marked," says Socrates, " how far the sagacity of 
those men reaches to whom is given the name of 
clever rogues ? With what penetration does their 
little soul (to i^vxoiptov) seize on the things to 
which it is turned. Its sight is by no means weak, 
but as they constrain it to serve their malice, the 

* Phcsdo, 67. 

t Ibid. Cicero and the Neoplatonicians reproduced this maxim. 

% ReptibL lib. ix. 580, 581. 



208 Why Men do not Believe, or 

more penetrating it is the more hurtful it is. This 
is most true. But take these same souls from 
childhood, cut and pare away all that the passions 
of lust have deposited therein, loosen them from 
the heavy masses attached to the pleasures of 
the table and similar luxuries, take away the 
weight which depresses the glance of the soul to 
inferior things — then if the same glance in 
the same souls, freed from these obstacles, is 
turned toward the things that are true, (eig tcl 
dXrjdT],) it will behold them with the same penetra- 
tion with which it now beholds these things to 
which it is turned. " # 

The faculty of knowing God and moral truths is 
implanted in man • but it is weakened, paralyzed 
in its movements, turned away from its object, by 
the weight of sensual passions or by material pre- 
possessions. To restore to this noble faculty its 
power of soaring on high, and to enable it to turn 
toward its true object, it is necessary to combat 
these passions and to triumph over these strange 
prepossessions. Man must be purified by mortifi- 
cation. Those who do not purify themselves spend 
their lives in miserably passing from the lower to 
the middle region of the soul, and in falling back 
again from the middle to the lower region, without 
ever raising themselves to that where God mani- 
fests himself. " Men who know neither wisdom 
nor virtue, who are always taken up with festivities 

* Republ. lib. vii. 519. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 209 

and other sensual pleasures, necessarily sink to 
the lowest region, (fcaro) ;) thence they raise them- 
selves to the middle region, (npbg to fierai-v,) and 
pass their lives in wandering between the two. 
But to traverse these two regions in order to look 
upon that which is really on high, and to raise 
themselves to it, this is what they never do. 
Therefore they have never been filled with the pos- 
session of that which truly is, nor have they ever 
tasted a pure and solid joy. Bent down toward 
the earth, like animals whose eyes are ever fixed 
upon their food, they give themselves up brutally 
to good cheer and love ; they dispute among them- 
selves for the enjoyment of these pleasures, turn 
their arms against one another, and end in mutual 
slaughter. . . . You have just drawn to the 
life the condition of the greater number of men. 
Does not the same thing necessarily occur with re- 
gard to that part of the soul where courage resides 
—when ambition, seconded by jealousy, the spirit 
of strife by violence, and a savage disposition by 
anger, drive man — without reflection or discern- 
ment — to pursue a false plenitude of honor and 
victory, and afterward to the satisfying of his re- 
sentment ? The same thing must necessarily hap- 
pen."* How many men run after this false pleni- 
tude of honor and victory, and, willing captives, 
know not how to surmount the narrow frontiers of 
that cavern which can only offer them shadows ! 

* RepuU. lib. ix. 586. 



210 Why Men do not Believe, or 

It is assuredly not absolutely necessary that the 
soul should be freed from the yoke of passions 
and interests before it can recognize God and the 
moral order, but it has need of a certain degree of 
purification to raise itself to that superior world 
and to attach itself thereto by a firm adhesion of 
the understanding. When a soul has attained this 
moral condition, it must, by an act of the will, un- 
fold its divine faculty, and direct it on the object 
for which the soul is made. This is a movement 
which purification renders easy, and which com- 
pletes the education of the soul. What is the use 
of the organ of sight if men do not make use of 
it, or if it is ill-directed ? " In the evolution which 
is given to the soul," says Plato, once more, " the 
whole art consists in turning it in the easiest and 
most beneficial manner. The question is not to 
bestow on it the faculty of sight, it has that al- 
ready • but its organ is in a bad direction, it does 
not look in the right direction. . . . The fac- 
ulty of knowledge . . . never loses its power, 
only it becomes useful and advantageous, or useless 
and hurtful according to the direction which is giv- 
en to it, (vnb rrjg TtepiayGyyr]g.)"* This is the real 
supreme importance of the part which the will bears 
in knowledge. Would that those poor souls who 
deny God and ignore themselves would seriously 
reflect upon it ! 

* Refubl. lib. vii. 518. 




The Principal Causes of Infidelity, 2 1 1 



CHAPTER VII. 

Scepticism — In what it consists — Different Causes 
of Scepticism. 

OW few souls are there, in these days, who 
preserve their equilibrium and their up- 
rightness, affirming what ought to be af- 
firmed, denying what ought to be denied, 
abstaining from judging where it is right so to ab- 
stain ! Aristotle has defined virtue to be the middle 
between two vices, the too much and the too little. # 
I do not accept this definition in its full extent, but it 
is frequently no less applicable in the intellectual 
than in the moral life. Sometimes men foolishly 
seek to raise themselves, alone and without support, 
above human nature ; sometimes they sink below 
that same nature by falling miserably into materi- 
alism or scepticism. How many minds are in per- 
petual oscillation between these two extremes, 
slipping now on one side, now on the other, with- 
out power to fix themselves in the just medium 
which reason prescribes ! 

Scepticism often depends on a moral condi- 
tion similar to that which engenders and nourishes 
materialism ; occasionally, however, it arises from 

* Ethic. Nicora. ii. 6. 



212 Why Men do not Believe, or 

other causes. I am now speaking of moral univer- 
sal scepticism, of that state of mind which denies 
nothing positively, but at the same time does not 
affirm any truth of the moral order, whether natural 
or supernatural ; in which a man doubts the exist- 
ence of God, of his own soul, of all religious prin- 
ciples. With some men, universal doubt is the re- 
sult of a false system of philosophy carried out to 
its extreme point, but this is an exception which 
we need not specially notice. Even in minds that 
give themselves up to philosophical studies and 
are sincerely prepossessed in favor of the truth, 
scepticism is rarely the logical product of a false 
method ; it almost always depends on other caus- 
es ; it springs for the most part from a monstrous 
and bitter deception. It is this deception which 
directly engenders intellectual despair ; but in this 
it is assisted by moral dispositions which indicate 
an unhealthy condition of the soul. Scepticism is 
a weakness of the will and of the understanding. 
It is the younger son of pride, if I may so speak. 
Pride begins with a ridiculous self-sufficiency and 
ends in despair. This is, in one word, the history 
of many sceptics of lofty and earnest intelligence. 
In this way, as we have already seen, St. Augustine 
fell into scepticism. Disdaining the Christian 
Faith, he at first imagined that he should be able 
to discover everything by reason alone ; when de- 
ceived in this presumptuous confidence, that noble 
genius recoiled upon itself, and took up the belief 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 2 1 3 

that the human understanding is powerless to at- 
tain a certain knowledge of truth. How many in- 
fidels, in our own days and under our own eyes, have 
gone through this same experience ! Their reason, 
jealous of a false independence, sought to walk 
alone to the conquest of all truths, and rejected 
with disdain the support of Divine Authority. 
And in what did this course generally end ? For 
the most part in miserable discouragement and bit- 
ter despair. I will content myself with recalling 
the example of Theodore JourTroy, one of the most 
eminent philosophers of the school of French ra- 
tionalists. JourTroy had received a Catholic edu- 
cation, but his belief was weak and unenlightened, 
and vanished at the first breath of rationalistic 
teaching. His young and ardent mind, seduced 
by the false promises of infidel philosophy, was 
persuaded that it was about to find, in that philo- 
sophy, the clear and definitive solution of all pro- 
blems. " My mind," wrote the disappointed philo- 
sopher at a later period, " was persuaded that on 
entering upon the study of philosophy it was about 
to encounter a regular science, which, after having 
pointed out its end and the process by which to at- 
tain it, would conduct me by a sure and well-de- 
fined road to the certain knowledge of those things 
which are of surpassing interest to man. In one 
word, my understanding, excited by its necessities 
and enlarged by the teaching of Christianity, had 
ascribed to philosophy the grand object, the vast 



214 Why Men do not Believe, or 

frame-work, the sublime bearing of a religion. 
. . . Such had been my hope ; and what did I 
find? The struggle which had aw T akened the 
slumbering echoes of the faculty, and which had 
turned the heads of all my fellow-students, had for 
its object — its sole object — the question of the ori- 
gin of ideas. I could not recover from my aston- 
ishment that men should occupy themselves w 7 ith 
the origin of ideas with as much ardor as if the 
whole of philosophy was contained in it, # and yet 
leave on one side man, God, the world, and the re- 
lations which unite them to the enigma of the past 
and the mysteries of the future, and to many other 
gigantic problems 011 which they did not conceal their 
scepticism. All philosophy seemed to be buried in 
a hole where there was no air, and in which my 
soul, recently exiled from Christianity, w T as stifled ; 
yet the authority of the teachers and the fervor of 
their disciples impressed me, and I dared not show 
either my surprise or my disappointment. "f 

Jouffroy soon became one of the most distin- 
guished masters of that philosophy w r hich assumed 
to be the supreme personification of reason. His 



* It must not be forgotten that in Rationalism, philosophy takes the 
place of religion, and ought consequently to fulfil the task of religion. 

t Noveaux Melanges Philosophiques, by Theodore Jouffroy, published 
by H. Damiron, pp. 118-121. Paris, 1842. The words firi?ited in italics 
have disappeared from the published copies, but they are to be found in the 
rare copies which have escaped the mutilation which the tardy and useless 
prudence of alarmed Rationalism has made this work undergo. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 2 1 5 

personal researches could not fill up the void which 
the loss of faith had produced in his soul. All re- 
ligious certainty had disappeared from his mind. 
He became a sceptic. God, man, the world, their 
mutual relations, all those grand problems which 
every intelligent soul necessarily proposes to itself, 
remained obscure enigmas to him. Listen to the 
philosopher telling, with the accent of despair, the 
impression which the sight of the places where he 
had once had the happiness to live as a Christian 
made upon his afflicted soul. He says : " I found 
myself once more under the roof where I had 
passed my childhood, in the midst of those who had 
brought me up so tenderly, in the presence of ob- 
jects which had struck my eyes, touched my heart, 
affected my understanding, in the happy days of 
my early life. . . . All was unchanged except 
myself. The Church, where the holy mysteries 
were celebrated with the same devotion ; the fields, 
the woods, the fountains which were still blessed in 
the spring-time ; the house where, on the appoint- 
ed day, an altar of flowers and foliage was still 
erected ; the Cure, who had instructed me in the 
Faith and who had grown old, was still there — 
still firm in his belief; all who surrounded me had 
the same heart, the same soul, the same hope in 
faith. I alone had lost it. I alone lived without 
knowing how or why. I alone, so learned, knew 
nothing. I alone was empty, agitated, deprived of 



216 Why Men do not Believe, or 

light, blind, and restless."* This is what Rational- 
ism had effected in an understanding naturally so 
powerful and enlightened. 

These last words of Jouffroy, so profoundly 
mournful, remind me of the observation of another 
philosopher who was also for some time an infidel, 
but who returned at last to the Faith of his child- 
hood. M. Droz says : " I was often astonished to 
see illustrious philosophers less enlightened on the 
most important subjects than humble Christians. 
Is it not shameful that sages should consume long 
watches in seeking what has been long ago found ? 
Philosophers discuss the question as to what is 
man's destination upon earth ; they plunge into 
subtleties, they exhaust themselves in declama- 
tions more or less eloquent, and in the meanwhile, 
a good Christian woman would say to them : ' God 
has created us to love him and to worship him, 
and to make us one day participate in his felicity. 
Here we are in a place of probation where duties 
are imposed upon us ; we may fulfil them or we 
may transgress them. After this short life, accord- 
ing as we shall have obeyed or resisted, the will of 
our Father, he will reward us because he is good, 
or he will punish us because he is just.' If philo- 
sophers do not confine themselves to the develop- 



* Work quoted by M. Guizot in his Meditations et Etudes Morales* 
Preface. Paris, 1852. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 2 1 7 

merit of these words in treating the same subject, 
they unteach us the truth."* 

JoufTroy was unable to recover from his fall into 
scepticism. This proud philosopher concludes his 
works by charging philosophy with absolute impo- 
tence ; he ends by declaring with bitter sadness 
that philosophy, which in his idea is the same thing 
as Rationalism, raises and brings to light a multi- 
tude of questions, none of which it is able to re- 
solve. What a lesson is this ! " Men begin," as 
I have said elsewhere, " by proclaiming the omnipo- 
tence of human reason, and end by accusing it of 
utter weakness. This is surely the well-deserved 
chastisement of pride, which in its delirium re- 
fuses to accept the conditions which God has im- 
posed upon our nature, and disdainfully rejects the 
hand which alone can save us. Neither so high 
nor so low is the teaching of good sense, and the 
teaching of Catholic philosophy. Rationalism is 
neither reason nor philosophy ; it is the mortal en- 
emy of both ; it compromises them and destroys 
them by its exaggerations and its foibles. "f 

The causes of scepticism are complex ; it is not 
produced in the same way in all minds that are at- 
tacked by this terrible malady. In the case of 
most infidels, it is not the result of a serious search 
after truth, but of an ill-directed search ; it is the 
fruit of levity, of dissipation, of indolence of the 

* A veux cCun Philosopke Chretien, pp. 32, 33. 

t Les Dogmes Catholiques; x torn, iii. p. 199. Pa^is, 1861. 



218 Why Men do not Believe, or 

will; or of a false direction of the understanding. 
Many Christians who are not familiar with psycho- 
logical studies ask themselves if scepticism is real- 
ly possible, and are astonished that earnest men 
can fall into such error. I can understand this 
blessed ignorance of evil. The faculties in a 
Christian soul are in equilibrium ; they are main- 
tained in their vigor and in their normal state ; 
scepticism, which is the overthrow and ruin of our 
moral and intellectual nature, is an impossibility in 
such a condition. But let a man enter into him- 
self and scrutinize his own thoughts, let him study 
attentively the history of those souls who are not 
settled in the truth by Faith, and he will soon be 
convinced that scepticism is unfortunately but too 
possible, and that it is easier to become the prey of 
this monster than people usually imagine. Let it 
never be forgotten that man is as free in his adhe- 
sion to truth as he is in his adhesion to virtue ; in 
both orders it is possible to fall away; men may 
reject what is true as they may reject what is good ; 
they may hesitate and vacillate in 'affirming what is 
true, as well as in practising what is good. 

All truths, even those which we call evident and 
which in reality are so, present a dark side to hu- 
man reason ; man, according to the saying of Mon- 
taigne, sees the whole of nothing. Even in the 
purely natural order, every object of human thought 
presents two faces — two sides ; one, clear, lumi- 
nous, evident ; the other, dark and cloudy. I see 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 219 

a man ; I affirm his existence ; I affirm that he is a 
being composed of two distinct substances, body 
and soul. This affirmation rests on evidence. But 
when I affirm the existence of the body, when I af- 
firm the existence of the soul, do I know which is 
the precise object of this twofold affirmation? I 
know it in a certain degree. I know which are the 
proper characteristics of the body ; I know which 
are the essential properties of the soul ; I see clear- 
ly that they are two distinct substances. But if I 
am asked to state in clear and forcible terms in 
what the essence of the human body consists, what 
constitutes its life, what the action of the organs of 
the body is, and how it is produced ; if I am asked 
to define with the utmost precision the essence of 
my own soul, and to explain the play of all its fac- 
ulties, I confess that I have no answer to give. I 
could certainly give a few explanations and elucida- 
tions, but I should soon come to a point before 
which I should be obliged to pause, and a grain of 
sand stops me as much as man. What philosopher 
durst flatter himself that he knows thoroughly, and 
in all their parts, those things the reality of which 
he affirms ? A mysterious obscurity hangs over all 
our knowledge. One of the leaders of French Ra- 
tionalism has said with great truth, " In science, 
as often as we make any advance, we find an abyss ; 
only weak minds believe that they can explain all 
and understand all."* 

* Jules Simon, La Religion Naturelle> p. 45. Paris, 1856. 



220 Why Men do not Believe, or 

If nature herself, bounded, limited, finite as she 
is, conceals depths which our minds cannot fathom, 
must not God, the Infinite Being, be full of obscu- 
rity to us ? No truth can be more easily demon- 
strated than the existence of God. But what in- 
comprehensible things are there in the nature of 
that God whose existence reason demonstrates ! 
Jules Simon, judging in this respect of the preten- 
sions to omniscience which many of his compa- 
nions in Rationalism set up, says : " More humili- 
ated by what is wanting to us than intoxicated by 
that which we are permitted to discover, the first 
word we shall pronounce when we speak of God is 
incomprehensibility. Human pride, and we must 
also say philosophical pride, revolts at this word. 
We are willing enough to admit that religion speaks 
of the incomprehensibility of God, and every one 
knows that the Catholic Religion proclaims a hid- 
den God — an incomprehensible God ; but it would 
seem that the very end of philosophy is to explain 
all mysteries, to render all ideas precise, to carry 
everywhere the light of reason, and to accustom 
the human mind to believe only what it can prove 
and understand. We might say that Bayle's pro- 
verb, • Understanding is the measure of belief/ is 
the very motto of philosophy. To believe without 
proof or to believe without understanding appears 
to human reason to be at most only two different 
modes of abdicating its claims. . . . These 
commonplaces cannot stand examination. In 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 221 

science, the question is not to attain what we wish, 
but to attain what we can. No doubt the essence 
of philosophy consists in believing nothing without 
proof; but when the existence of a being is once 
proved, are we to renounce our belief in that exist- 
ence on the pretext that the nature of that being is 
incomprehensible to us ? . . . These data are 
so simple and natural, that when we reflect on them 
we know not how to explain the pretensions to 
omniscience which certain schools have set up." # 
"If in nature herself," adds the philosopher, "that 
is to say, in what is necessarily limited and imper- 
fect, we admit the existence of real mysteries un- 
fathomable to human reason, by what mental aber- 
ration would we have the only perfect Being to be 
without abysses which our thoughts cannot pene- 
trate ?"f " My life is passed at the bottom of an 
abyss, in the midst of mysteries. I am surrounded 
by the unknown ; I am myself ever unknown to my 
own mind, (in the sense in which we spoke just 
now.) In spite of all this I live in peace. I speak 
of science in pompous terms, and when I come to 
demonstrate the existence of God and am told that 
he is incomprehensible, I cry out and declare my- 
self offended in my dignity as a human being and 
as a philosopher." % 

No one could express this better. In these pas- 
sages the author of La Religion Naturelle does but 

* Ouv. cit. pp. 35, 36. t Ibid. p. 38, t Ibid. p. 43. 



222 Why Men do not Believe, or 

declare a well-known truth — one which has been 
recalled and explained a hundred times by Chris- 
tian philosophers, but it is a truth big with conse- 
quences and which has always more or less affright- 
ed Rationalism. 

This, then, is the condition of human reason. 
We meet with mystery even in the dogmas of natu- 
ral religion — in things which seem the most familiar 
to us. What must we do in presence of that ob- 
scurity which in all our knowledge mingles con- 
stantly with the light ? Must I deny, or abstain 
from affirming the existence of God because I can 
only comprehend his nature in part ? It is unde- 
niable that I can do so. The obscurity which ac- 
companies light, and to which our intelligence is 
averse, makes this denial possible, and leaves me 
at liberty to give or refuse my consent to the known 
truth. All depends on the disposition of my will. 
We know what scepticism is. It will not accept a 
light mingled with shadows — it rejects the light out 
of fear and hatred of darkness. A reasonable 
man will not act thus. He admits the obscurity, 
which is inseparable from all knowledge ; he ad- 
mits it, not for itself, but on the authority of the 
light. He knows that he is not intended to under- 
stand everything. We are intelligent beings, no 
doubt, but we are also finite beings, and conse- 
quently the comprehension with which we are en- 
dowed is finite. Also, further, we are beings sub- 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity, 223 

ject to trial ; and this state of probation excludes 
the full light of day. We mistake the laws of our 
nature and of our actual condition if we deny the 
existence of God because his nature is incompre- 
hensible to us. Such pride would be ridiculous 
were it not profoundly criminal. 

Occasionally scepticism springs less from pride 
than from a false direction of the understanding. 
Some minds prefer to direct and arrest their atten- 
tion to what is obscure, not only with regard to 
moral and religious truths, but to historical facts and 
questions of natural science ; they will not look at 
the light, or scarcely glance at it, they fix their eyes 
only on the shadows. Is it astonishing if they do 
not see, or if they hesitate and grope their way 
along like the blind ? We know many such minds. 
Things which are the most evident, the most solid 
ly demonstrated, appear doubtful to them, because 
they do not see arguments, but pay attention to a 
thousand little difficulties in which their darkened 
reason perplexes itself, and ends by losing its way 
completely. Why not look on the side where light 
is? 

We have said already that levity, indifference, 
apathy, generally helped and fed by the passions, 
is the most frequent cause of religious scepticism. 
Men do not love the truth • they do not desire it — 
they fear it and turn away from it as from an 
enemy. With such dispositions, without the special 
aid of God, how can they avoid becoming sceptics ? 



224 Why Men do not Believe, or 

But let them not deceive themselves ; such a scep- 
ticism is highly criminal, and the truth, from which 
they now fly, will one day find them out to their 
cost. 

One, who had traversed all the phases of infidel- 
ity, has said : " The greatest benefit of religion is 
to save us from doubt and uncertainty. ... All 
is uncertain, fugitive, and changeable, in a mind 
destitute of religious belief." * Change, instabil- 
ity, fluctuation, is a malady of the understanding 
as well as of the heart of man ; faith cures us of 
this malady by fixing our mind upon truth and 
prohibiting doubt : those who do not believe are 
but too frequently its victims* " Therefore," says 
an Italian philosopher, "the Catholic precept is 
most wise which forbids us to admit a doubt of the 
known truth even for a single instant. The weak- 
ness and instability of the human mind are such, 
and so great, that however strong and solid our 
persuasion of the truth of any article of faith may 
be, there is not one with regard to which difficulties 
may not sometimes arise, capable of making a mo- 
mentary impression on the mind \ if men entertain 
this impression, doubting of the truth which they 
possess, they will by degrees acquire a habit of 
scepticism which will soon leave no belief intact. 
But if, on the contrary, they courageously resist 
these assaults — if they despise these involuntary 
clouds of the mind — by degrees the darkness will 

* Maine de Biran, Journal Iniitne, p. 333. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 225 

disperse, calm will return, they will be able to smile 
at their doubts instead of thinking them formidable, 
and will wonder that they ever looked on them in 
a serious light. Sophistry sometimes assumes a 
specious and seductive aspect in the eyes of the 
understanding, as the passions do in the eyes of 
the heart; but if men are strong and do not 
yield to appearances, it will soon vanish away." # 



* Gioberti, Introduzione alio Studio della Fllosofia. From the French 
translation, t. iii. p. 182. 



226 Why Men do not Believe, or 




CHAPTER VIII. 

Corruption of the Understanding — Sephistry and its 
Victims. 

HE understanding may become corrupt- 
ed as well as the heart, but this is a 
case of less frequent occurrence ; we 
have, however, signal examples of this 
corruption of the understanding in our day. This 
corruption is at once the root and the fruit of 
sophistry. I have no desire to go over the subject 
of modern sophistry, which my friend, Father 
Gratry, has treated in so masterly a manner ; but 
after having, in the words of this uncompromising 
religious writer, pointed out the evil, I will seek to 
indicate the remedy. 

" The sophists of the eighteenth century attacked 
the Faith in the name of reason ; those of the 
nineteenth now attack reason itself. The sophists 
follow in the intellectual order the course which, 
according to Tacitus, they follow in the political 
order — they attack reasonable life in the same 
manner as they attack social life. ' They first at 
tack power/ says Tacitus, ' in the name of liberty, 
and when power has been overcome they attack 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 227 

liberty itself.' # We see the same thing before our 
eyes in the intellectual order. At first they at- 
tacked the power and authority of Faith in the 
name of reason ; now they attack the free and 
manifest light of reason. At first they rejected 
the Eternal Word illuminating the assembly of 
Christians with his revelations ; now they attack 
the Word, who, as the eternal light of reason, 
enlightens every man coming into this world. 
. . . Such is the progress of intellectual decay. 

" It is certain that the absurd, set forth daringly, 
openly, and without evasion, has sometimes a 
strange power. It has the fascination of a preci- 
pice. I know many instances of it. When a mind 
has once had the weakness to hesitate for an in- 
stant in presence of the visibly absurd, that mind is 
lost. As there is nothing more to expect, in the 
order of thought, from a mind which demands 
the demonstration of evidence, so there is nothing 
more to hope for from a mind which demands the 
refutation of the absurd, which is itself the evidence 
of error. Beyond evidence there is nothing to 
demonstrate ; beyond the absurd there is nothing 
to refute. 

" There philosophy stops. Then the mind, de- 
prived of the support of evidence, and of the beacon- 
light of the absurd, quits the limits of reason, and 
abandons philosophy for sophistry. . . . And what 

* " Ut imperium evertant libertatem praeferunt ; si perverterint, liberta- 
tem ipsara aggredientur."--^*«0/xvi. 22. 



228 Why Men do not Believe, or 

is sophistry ? It is the process of a reason over- 
thrown, which asks the demonstration of evidence, 
and which in the meanwhile denies evidence ; which 
demands the refutation of the absurd, and which 
in the meanwhile affirms the absurd." # 

It is not that, as in materialism and scepticism, 
the soul is simply hebetated or enfeebled ; sophistry 
is the perversion and utter overthrow of the mind. 
All is reversed; the fundamental principles of 
reason are overthrown, and the understanding, as 
it were, uprooted, floats in darkness and feeds 
upon contradictions. Hegel is the great master of 
sophistry, as we stated before, on the subject of 
Pantheism. Hegel has founded in the midst of 
our Christian Europe a sophistry infinitely more 
dangerous than that of Gorgias and the other 
Greek sophists whom Socrates and Plato opposed. 
He has ruined innumerable minds. Father Gratry 
says once more : " When a mind under the influ- 
ence of Hegelism, which is the most daring and at 
the same time the most radical form of sophistry, 
has once given way, and destroyed the two extreme 
limits of reason, which are evidence and the absurd, 
that mind — whatever may be its riches, its distinc- 
tion, its natural qualities — that mind is lost. You 
can no longer reckon upon its judgment. To it 
assertion and contradiction are alike. It seeks 
contradiction methodically. Philosophy is now 

* Une Etude sur la S ophistique contemporahie , by P&re Gratry, ;r». jta- 
126 Paris, 1 85 1. 



The Principal Causes of hijidelity. 229 

out of the question : the mind is occupied only with 
that sterile movement of thought of, for, or against, 
which Plato in the Sophist calls in derision * enan- 
tiopoiology.' " # 

This sophistry, the effects of which are before our 
eyes, springs directly from Pantheism ; it is the 
necessary application of the only logic which that 
cloudy system has to show ; which lays down as a 
thesis the identity of God and the world, of the 
necessary and the contingent, of the absolute and 
the relative, and thus terminates fatally in the con- 
fusion of truth and falsehood, good and evil, being 
and non-existence. Pantheism is the doctrine of 
universal identity or general confusion. In this 
pretended philosophy, light and darkness, day and 
night, are but one and the same thing. Hegel 
affirms this in express terms in his logic. It is the 
direct negation of reason, of what humanity in all 
times has always called reason. 

For some years past Pantheism has in a remark- 
able degree lost its prestige in the philosophical 
schools ; but it has poisoned the reason of Europe, 
and even in these days intelligent men, otherwise 
richly endowed, are attacked by its venom. Many 
minds are wholly corrupted ; they have no princi- 
ples left in virtue of what they call progress ; that 
which is true to-day may be false to-morrow ; they 
have no longer a single fixed point, and their rea- 
son, being truly uprooted, vacillates between an as- 

* Ouv. cit. pp. 126, 127. 



230 Why Men do not Believe, or 

sertion and its contrary, and incessantly contradicts 
itself, whilst firmly believing in its own fidelity. 
Intellectual corruption is not the same in all soph- 
ists ; but we are acquainted with several, regarded 
as oracles by a considerable portion of the unbe- 
lieving world, in whom reason appears to be totally 
overthrown. 

How are such minds to be cured ? I know of 
but two remedies — humility and the sincere love of 
truth. Contempt of truth is the characteristic of 
the sophist, and it is usually the fruit of moral and 
intellectual egotism — that is, of pride in its highest 
degree. The leader of contemporary sophistry 
himself warns us that the soul must strip itself of 
all love for being, truth, justice, God, in order to 
arrive at confounding being and non-being. Listen 
to the profound teaching of these words : " The 
formula, ' Being and non-being are identical/ ap- 
pears so great a paradox that reason can scarcely 
regard it in a serious light. Doubtless no great 
effort of the mind is necessary to render the asser- 
tion, that being and non-being are the sam'e thing, 
ridiculous, nor to deduce absurdities in its applica- 
tion. For instance, it may be maintained as a con- 
sequence of this principle, that it is the same thing 
whether my house, my goods, the air I breathe, 
this city, the sun, justice, the soul, God, are or are 
not. ... In fact, philosophy is. precisely that doc- 
trine which teaches man to free himself from a 
multitude of special ends and points of view, and 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 231 

renders him independent of everything, so that it is 
absolutely indifferent to him whether things are or 
are not."* 

Hegel agrees then with us ; the absolute indif- 
ference of the soul with respect to all things is, in 
his eyes as it is in ours, the source or nourishment 
of sophistry. Let this detestable source, then, be 
dried up and sophistry will disappear. Let this 
deadly indifference be replaced by the vivifying 
love of truth, justice, and goodness ; reason will 
then recover its uprightness, and the soul, quitting 
the cloudy abyss where it is struggling, will soar 
once again to the pure, serene regions of light. 



* " In der That 1st die Philosophie eben diese Lehre, den Menschen von 
einer unendlichen Menge endlicher Zwecke und Absichten zu befreien, und 
ihn dagegen gleichgiiltig zu machen, so dass ihm allerdings dasselbe sei, ob 
solche Sachen sind oder nicht." — Hegel, CEuvres, 2 edit. torn. vi. pp. 171, 
172. 



232 Why Men do not Believe, or 




CHAPTER IX. 

Unbelievers who admit the Fundamental Principles 
of Natural Religion — Causes of their Unbelief 

|OPHISTRY, scepticism, materialism, are 
all radical forms of infidelity, which at- 
tack reason as directly as Faith ; that is 
to say, they aim at the total ruin of the 
moral man. We will again quote Father Gratry, 
who says : " We have frequently repeated, after 
Plato, Leibnitz, and others, that the mind of man 
may follow two contrary tendencies, by the one 
raising itself toward being, toward God, by the 
other, sinking toward nothingness ; one is followed 
by philosophers, the other by sophists. Traces of 
these two tendencies are to be found in all ages ; 
it is an intellectual imitation of the life or death of 
souls according as they ascend toward God, or 
depart from him of their own free will."* The 
infidelity which has been described in the three 
preceding chapters is the act of minds which, by a 
free and secret choice, descend toward nothing- 
ness and plunge themselves into darkness. No 
Christian age has ever witnessed so many souls 
given over to this spirit of darkness as the present. 

* Logique, torn, i. pp. 124, 125. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 233 

Let not earnest men, who have retained some 
vigor, some moral uprightness, whether they are 
believers or unbelievers, deceive themselves; reason 
is in peril ; in the midst of the astonishing material 
progress which this century realizes every day, and 
to which we give our willing admiration, reason, 
good sense, that something which is the support 
and necessary safeguard of society, is visibly low- 
ered • the moral standard of men's minds has sunk 
in a manner which would alarm us, did we not 
hope in the invincible power of the Christian Faith. 

How is it that the best among rationalists, those 
who join us in our struggles against sophists, obsti- 
nately reject this Faith, without which our civiliza- 
tion would soon sink into the abject grossness of 
materialism ? How is it that learned men, who 
recognize a personal God infinitely good and infi- 
nitely wise, all-powerful and free, Creator of the 
world — how is it that they reject all positive inter- 
vention of this God in the government of the 
human race, that they deny the miraculous and 
supernatural order, understand not that marvellous, 
and, if I may be permitted to call it so, that 
natural effusion of infinite goodness in the Incarna- 
tion of Jesus Christ ? We must endeavor to clear 
up this moral mystery. 

From the moment men admit miracles they are 
no longer infidels, and in our European society they 
are very near being Christians. Now, is it con- 
ceivable that a learned man, whose mind is not 



234 Why Men do not Believe, or 

corrupted, should recognize a personal and free 
God, the Master of the universe, and yet deny him 
the power of acting in the world as he pleases, 
according to the dictates of his wisdom and the 
inspirations of his love ? Droz, who had been an 
infidel for a great part of his life, passes the follow- 
ing judgment on this incomprehensible prejudice: 
" Infidels have one fixed idea. They will have it 
that miracles are impossible. When I was but a 
Deist, I recognized the absurdity of those who 
pretended to impose limits on Divine Power. I 
will add that this age is too enlightened for the 
prejudice which refuses to admit miracles to sub- 
sist. The day will come when it will be a conse- 
quence of this simple evident truth : God is an 
Infinite Being."* Nevertheless, this prejudice, so 
manifestly contrary to reason, still maintains its 
ground. 

We remarked, when relating the conversion of 
the philosopher Justin, that in the early ages of 
Christianity, pagans who were learned, and anxious 
to discover truth, generally admitted the Christian 
Faith from the moment that the idea of the true 
God, the Creator of the world, had fully taken 
possession of their understanding ; the religion of 
Jesus Christ, with its mysteries, its institutions, its 
practices, appeared to the generous and grateful 
souls of these men a consequence and in some 
sort a natural application of the idea of a God in- 

*Aveux cVun I kilosofk-e Chretien, p. 79. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 235 

finitely perfect, who is rather the Father than the 
Master of the human race. The knowledge of 
God and of his relations with the world led 
straight to the belief in the Incarnation of the 
Word and in all the ineffable inventions of the love 
of the Saviour of men. # There is not a single 
pagan philosopher mentioned in the early ages of 
the Church who rejected the Christian Faith after 
having accepted the true notion of God. Why is 
it otherwise in our days ? How is it that we see 
earnest minds admit the natural, whilst they reject 
the supernatural part of the Christian Creed ? This 
depends on certain moral dispositions. 

After St. Augustine had studied in the school of 
Plato, he recovered himself nobly; he rose to 
things appertaining to the intelligible world, and 
found once more the spiritual and perfect God, who 
is the light of the world. But the Platonists 
had not instructed him in the true relations be- 
tween God and the created universe ; they did not 
know them. Still, in their school he had formed a 
sufficiently pure idea of God, though it was incom- 

* " The Sacrament of the Eucharist," says Madame Swetchine, "is the 
noblest expression of a love which can brook no limit, no separation, no ob- 
stacle. By this adorable Sacrament we feel the presence of God in our- 
selves, his intimate union, not only with the spirit, but also with the flesh 
and blood. The love of God, Almighty as himself, could go no farther, 
but thus far it could go, and in mercy God has stopped only at its extreme 
limits. . . . The reality of our Lord's presence in the Holy Eucha- 
rist emanates almost necessarily from redemption, as the supreme conse- 
quence and highest development of infinite love. The Eucharist is the 
natural effect of a supernatural charity." — Medilatims et Prikres, pp. 212, 
211 Paris, 1863. 



236 Why Men do not Believe, or 

plete and undefined. In this state he saw no diffi- 
culty in believing in the Word of whom Christiani- 
ty speaks, but he could not understand the mystery 
of the Incarnation of the Word. And why did his 
mind recoil before this mystery? He tells us him- 
self it was because he was governed by a pride 
which hindeted him from recognizing and confess- 
ing the weakness, the failings, the moral miseries 
from which his soul was suffering.* When St. Au- 
gustine saw himself as he really was, with all the 
humiliations and all the necessities of his nature, 
then he understood the benefit of the Incarnation 
of the Word, and Jesus Christ appeared to him as 
the necessary Restorer of our fallen nature. Is it 
not possible that many rationalists are retained in 
unbelief by the same causes which retained St. 
Augustine? "You ?£////;w/come to me," said the 
Word Incarnate himself to the Jews who rejected 
him.f The true root of unbelief is the will. It is 
pride, it is sensuality, it is egotism in some shape 
or other which hinders the will from turning to- 
ward Jesus Christ and fixing in sincerity the eye 
of the understanding on this adorable form. " How 
can you believe," said the Saviour to the Pharisees, 
who were proud of their vain wisdom — " How can 
you believe, who receive glory from one another, 
and the glory which is from God alone you do not 
seek ?"j And once more : " Men loved darkness 
rather than the light, for their works were evil."§ 

* Conf. lib. vii. c. 20. f John v. 40. + John v. 44. § John iii. 19. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 237 

Human nature is still the same. St. Paul said that 
the Cross was a stumbling-block to the Jews and 
foolishness to the Gentiles. For God, the Master 
of the world, to lower himself, for the love of men, 
even to die upon a cross, was, in the eyes of ego- 
tism, an unspeakable absurdity. When men do not 
love, how can they understand what love is ? 
When men refer everything to themselves, how can 
they comprehend the generous and admirable folly 
of devotion and sacrifice? The Cross of Jesus 
Christ has exalted human nature. It has become 
to all civilized nations the symbol of honor and of 
glory; and nevertheless it remains a stumbling- 
block and foolishness to infidels. When will they 
surmount the narrow boundaries of that egotism in 
which they waste away in sterile and delusive self- 
enjoyment? When will they comprehend that if 
we, who are evil, can give our life to save one of 
our brethren, God, who is Infinite Goodness, can 
empty himself, according to the expression of St. 
Paul, take the form of a servant, and die upon a 
cross, out of love for his children and to save 
them ? A pure, devoted, humble soul has nothing 
to oppose to the Christian Faith, but beholds in it 
the most touching, and at the same time the most 
magnificent effusion of the love of God. 

Rationalists, I well know, hide their unbelief un- 
der fair pretexts. Reason, they say, must not ab- 
dicate its sway ; reason has prerogatives which it 
may not renounce. In Christians, they say, reason 



238 Why Men do not Believe, or 

abdicates by submitting to a power foreign to itself 
and by accepting mysteries which it cannot under- 
stand on the authority of that power. I wish to 
believe that men are sincere when they speak thus, 
but we are so ingenious in deceiving ourselves 
when the sacrifice of some passion is in question. 
Ask Droz, Augustine Thierry, Maine de Biran, or 
any other of the numerous infidels who have re- 
cently returned to the Faith, whether they sacrificed 
one single prerogative of reason in submitting to 
the authority of the Church ; they will answer, that 
they had certainly to sacrifice prejudices and pas- 
sions, but that on becoming Christians they did 
but yield full obedience to reason. Why, then, 
speak of the abdication of reason, and of a power 
foreign to reason ? Is God a stranger to reason ? 
We Catholics bow before the authority of the 
Church, because we regard her as the representa- 
tive and permanent organ of Jesus Christ, the 
Word made flesh ; we believe this not blindly, not 
lightly, but because the proofs which establish it 
are evident to the eyes of reason. Faith is finite 
reason, obeying infinite reason, or the Word of God, 
in all things ; what can be more just? what more 
worthy of us ? We admit doctrines, it is true, 
which transcend reason and which reason can only 
half understand, but we accept them on the testi- 
mony of an authority whose title cannot be dis- 
puted. Besides, in things of the purely natural or- 
der, the human mind meets with obscurities, with 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 239 

unfathomable mysteries ; why, then, should it take 
offence at mysteries of the supernatural order ? 

Jules Simon, one of the leaders of spiritualistic 
rationalism, speaks eloquently of the mysteries of 
the natural order, but condemns absolutely, in the 
name of reason, the mysteries of Christianity. 
This philosopher sees an essential difference be- 
tween the incomprehensible and mystery in the 
Christian sense of the word. These are the in- 
credible words which he has written on the subject 
in the first edition of his book, La Religion Natu- 
relle : " If, in this explanation of the incomprehen- 
sible, propositions are enunciated which are not 
proved, which do not convey a precise meaning to 
the mind, and which imply contradiction in terms, 
this new doctrine is that which properly constitutes 
mystery. This doctrine is not only incomprehen- 
sible ; besides this characteristic it has three others : 
it is affirmed without being demonstrated ; it is not 
intelligible in its enunciation ; it contains a formal 
contradiction. " # All this is false, absolutely false, 
and in direct opposition to all the teaching of 
Catholic theology. Christian mysteries are all de- 
monstrated ; not in themselves, doubtless, but in 
revelation, the existence of which is verified by 
reason with an evidence which defies objection ; ali 
are intelligible in their enunciation, and no one has 

* La Religion Naturelle, pp. 233, 234. The author has modified this lan- 
guage in the third edition of his work, but he has not corrected the idea 
which it expresses. 



240 Why Men do not Believe, or 

ever been able to discover the slightest contradic- 
tion in a single dogma of Christianity. Jules 
Simon knows nothing of our great theologians, 
who, nevertheless, deserve to be consulted by every 
earnest philosopher. He knows not that a science 
exists infinitely higher than the petty philosophy 
with which rationalism seeks to nourish superior 
minds, and that this science, which is called the- 
ology, consists precisely in the explanation of all 
those mysteries of which he speaks so lightly.* 
But at least he knows Leibnitz, for he has borrowed 
largely from him. Now Leibnitz establishes clear- 
ly that the Christian mysteries are not contradic- 
tory, that they do not contradict reason, that they 
are not contrary to any truth evidently recognized 
by reason ; that their enunciation presents a suffi- 
ciently intelligible meaning to the mind, and that, 
in short, all objections opposed to them may be 
solved. " That which is contrary to mysteries in 
us," says Leibnitz, " is not reason, or the natural 
light, or the natural sequence of truths ; it is cor- 
ruption, it is error or prejudice, it is darkness."f 
This is what that great man thought of the contra- 

* Relying on the works of the authorized interpreters of theology, we 
have ourselves attempted a thorough explanation of all the mysteries of the 
Catholic Creed. We do not pretend to have demonstrated those mysteries, 
but we think we have placed them in such a light, that, according to the 
expression of F. Lacordaire, " pride can only insult itself in despising them." 
— See Les Dogmes Catholiques. 

t Essais de Theodkee. Disc ours da la Cojifo-nrnte ah la, Foi et de la 
Raisou, n. 61. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 24.1 

dictions which erring minds imagine they have dis- 
covered in the mysteries of Christianity. 

Let people cease to set the prerogatives and dig- 
nity of human reason against the Christian Faith. 
We believe on good evidence ; our faith has no- 
thing in common with credulity. " There is a great 
difference," as Joubert well observes, " between cre- 
dulity and faith ; one is a natural defect of the 
mind, the other is a virtue ; the first comes from our 
extreme weakness, the second has a mild and praise- 
worthy docility for its principle, quite compatible 
with strength, and which is even highly favorable 
to strength. " # This docility, whence faith springs, 
is not contrary to our dignity ; it is only contrary 
to our pride. " Let us be men with men," says 
Joubert once more, " but before God let us be al- 
ways children ; for in fact, we are but children in 
his eyes."f Dignity, in whatever way we under 
stand it, can only lose by that self-sufficiency which 
affects to depend on self alone, and refuses to bow 
before the Gospel. "When a man has rebelled 
against the Gospel," says Madame Swetchine, " he 
has given himself a master, and that is himself; a 
master who prepares the way for many more by a 
continual descent."^ 

Faith is no more opposed to the freedom of rea- 
son than to its dignity ; as we have already said, it 

* Pensees, torn. ii. p. 26. Paris, 1862. t Ibid. 

% Madame Swetchine : Sa Vie et ses (Euvres. Pensees, torn. ii. p. 109. 
Paris, i860. 



242 Why Men do not Believe, or 

is only contrary to the libertinism of reason. 
" Why," observes Madame Swetchine, " should not 
faith bind our understanding, as morality binds our 
actions ? Do we cease to be free because we are 
virtuous ? Why should we cease to be free because 
we are believers ? Does not true liberty always 
exercise itself in a given space ? Does it not re- 
quire a centre to attract it, and a basis for its sup- 
port ?"* 

* De la Verlte du Christianisme, p. 85. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 243 




CHAPTER X. 

Recapitulation of the Causes of Infidelity — How a 
Young Man may become an Infidel. 

BELIEVE that I have now pointed out 
the chief causes of infidelity. These 
causes, as I have shown, are many and 
diverse ; but infidelity depends far more 
on the will and on a certain moral state of the soul, 
than on the understanding. Faith is an act of the 
understanding, since its object is the revealed truth 
of God ; but in order that the understanding may 
give its assent to Divine Truth and firmly adhere 
to it, the intervention of the will is necessary, and 
under the inspiration of the grace of God, the will 
intervenes freely. This grace is refused to none. 
Faith is free : therefore it is meritorious : faith is a 
virtue, and virtue, as a moral act, presupposes 
freedom. Man is free to choose between faith wA 
unbelief, in the same way that he is free to ch,oo,se 
between good and evil, on condition of bearing the 
responsibility of his choice. We are free to ad- 
here or not to adhere to revealed truth \ first, be- 
cause even in things that are evident, it depends on 
ourselves whether we will turn away the eyes of our 
understanding from the light that enlightens all 



244 Why Men do not Believe, or 

things — whether we will arrest the spring of our 
mind, give it a false direction or even corrupt it ; 
secondly, because the principal object of faith is 
not self-evident, but is obscure. " All religion is in 
the same plane : light is always mingled with ob- 
scurity; and why? In order that faith may be a 
virtue.'"* This mingling of light and darkness is 
the necessary condition of this present life, because 
it is a life of probation ; the full day will dawn only 
when trial shall have ceased. 

Ignorance itself, which is one of the commonest 
sources of infidelity, is often the result of an evil- 
disposed will. In such case ignorance is culpable, 
and its guilt is greater or less, according as it is 
more or less wilful. How can we excuse the levity, 
the dissipation, the indifference in which most un- 
believers live, and whence their ignorance of reli- 
gion proceeds ? Are not reasonable beings bound 
to seek seriously and sincerely the knowledge of 
the truth ? Moral indifference, the ordinary source 
of religious ignorance, is capable of leading to 
every degree of degradation and ruin. When a 
mind is infected by it, it rarely stops at the rejec- 
tion of Christianity, but almost always descends to 
the denial or corruption of the fundamental princi- 
ples of natural religion \ generally it becomes ma- 
terialistic, and believes only in sensible realities. 
Materialism, which is the lowest degree of moral 
and intellectual degradation, is the most frequent 

* Madame Swetchine, Pensees a torn. ii. p. 89. 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 245 

result of indifference in religious matters. Scepti- 
cism, which is the supreme impotence of reason, 
often depends on a moral condition similar to that 
which engenders and nourishes materialism. In 
certain minds of high intelligence, eager for truth, 
it may spring from a senseless pride which has had 
a cruel fall. People flatter themselves that they 
can remove the limits of reason ; they want to be 
able to see the truth without clouds, and when these 
clouds, which they believed themselves able to dis- 
perse, continually reappear, they grow angry, and 
end by denying the light because of the shadows 
which they themselves cast upon it. This is the 
despair of disappointed pride. But there is a mal- 
ady of the soul still more difficult to cure than 
scepticism or materialism, and it is that condition 
of intellectual corruption which is called sophistry. 
We have seen this frightful and fatal malady, which 
destroys many highly-gifted minds. It is useless to 
seek to convince sophists that they are in error ; 
they will not understand you ; they contradict 
themselves at every step, whilst they maintain with 
imperturbable assurance that they never contradict 
themselves, and that they constantly obey reason. 
They are minds which literally see everything cross 
wise, and it is impossible to reason with them. " If 
thy eye be clear," says the Gospel, " thy whole body 
shall be lightsome ; but if thy eye be evil, thy whole 
body shall be darksome."* The intellectual eye of 

* Matt. vi. 22, 23. 



246 Why Men do not Believe, or 

sophists is evil ; simplicity and clearness must be 
restored to it, otherwise they cannot receive the 
light, or they receive it imperfectly. How can this 
be done ? Only by changing the soul in its inmost 
depths. Let them yield less to egotism ; let them 
love truth more ; let their will be simple and just, 
and their understanding will promptly recover that 
uprightness which is the condition of true enlight- 
enment. 

The greatest obstacle to the Christian Faith is 
egotism ; egotism of the senses, or sensuality ; 
egotism of the mind, or pride ; egotism in every 
form. We have each of us daily to struggle 
against this egotism, which shuts out innumerable 
souls from the light of Faith. If unbelievers, of 
whatever kind, were animated by a generous love 
of truth — if they showed that they were ready to 
embrace it at the price of any sacrifice — they would 
soon become Christians. Their will, recovering its 
rectitude and its moral energy, would turn the eye 
of the understanding in the right direction, and 
would confirm the understanding in its adhesion to 
recognized truth. Doubtless we may hesitate even 
in the face of known truth ; but such hesitation is 
a culpable weakness, and if the will be pure and 
vigorous it will not hesitate. Moreover, God will 
sustain it, because it will be humble and suppliant 
as it becomes every created will to be. 

See this young man of twenty. He has been 
baptized into the Church of Gcd, and has received 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 247 

the Divine seed of Faith in the Sacrament of re- 
generation. This blessed seed has germinated un- 
der the breath of the Holy Spirit, and by the cul- 
ture which it has received from the pious solicitude 
of a Christian family. This young man has made 
his first Communion, he has been marked in the 
Sacrament of Confirmation with the seal of Chris- 
tian manhood. But now he believes no longer ; 
the Christian life of his soul has disappeared ; 
Faith appears to be wholly extinct within him. He 
goes so far as even to affect pity for the belief 
which in his tender years he shared with his mother ; 
he parades a supreme contempt for the teaching of 
the Church of Jesus Christ ; he is astonished that 
defenders of such teaching can still be found ; he 
is inclined to regard the defenders of the Faith of 
his childhood as hypocrites, seeking to make their 
profit out of the ignorance and credulity of the 
simple. What can have happened to work such a 
revolution in this youthful mind ? If we ask him, 
he will probably tell us what are the new sources 
of light whence he has drawn decisive proofs 
against that old Faith which for nineteen centuries 
has held captive the loftiest intellects, and reigned 
over the noblest and the purest wills. What has 
this contemptuous youth seen of the Faith of Bos- 
suet, of Leibnitz, of Joseph Gorres, of Lacordaire, 
of Ozanam, of so many eminent men who in our 
days have adorned and still adorn philosophy, lit- 
erature, criticism, science ? Hear him : he has 



248 Why Men do not Believe, or 

scrutinized everything, examined everything by the 
torch of pure and independent reason. The Catho- 
lic Creed cannot sustain for a moment the exami- 
nation of serious criticism. Philosophy, history, 
science, agree to condemn it. ■ .... . What com- 
posure ! what assurance ! what proud, triumphant 
judgments ! But these lofty affirmations, these 
pompous maxims, cannot impose on any one who 
has had experience of men and things ; such an 
one easily discovers behind this clatter of preten- 
sions and empty phrases the true history of this 
poor soul. It is this : 

This young man, who so proudly condemns 
Catholic belief, has examined nothing for himself; 
he has had neither the leisure nor the will to do so. 
He has read none of the great works of the Chris- 
tian apologists ; he has not even opened a detailed 
and scientific exposition of the dogmas which the 
Church teaches. He condemns Christianity on 
hearsay with the lightest and blindest faith that can 
be imagined. His morals being already tainted, 
doubt entered his soul the first time he heard a 
contemptuous word spoken with regard to the Faith 
which had enlightened his tender years ; he gave 
ear to the word of the tempter, which met with a 
sympathetic and ready echo in a heart already de- 
graded, or on the eve of becoming so. Doubt 
having penetrated his soul and disturbed its sereni- 
ty, he sought not to conquer it ; on the contrary, 
he acted so as to encourage it and with the secret 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 249 

desire of beholding its perfect triumph over the 
ruins of an austere faith. He let loose his sensual 
passions, or at least contenting himself with avoid- 
ing gross excess, he did but half restrain them ; he 
fed his understanding with writings hostile to Cath- 
olicism, and would only read such books and jour- 
nals as calumniated the Church in her dogma, her 
worship, her history, her present life, in all her mani- 
festations. These writings, in which ignorance 
rivals hate, are henceforth his sole light, his sole 
authority in religious questions ; he blindly repeats 
the sentences he finds in them, imagining perhaps 
that he is judging the teaching of Faith with entire 
intellectual independence. Poor young man ! 
Your affected independence of reason will only de- 
ceive children ; any serious observer will tell you 
how you have descended all the steps of the ladder 
of doubt and infidelity ; he will give you the his- 
tory of your moral and intellectual falls, and plac- 
ing his finger on the wounds of your heart, as well 
as on the wounds of your understanding, he will 
force you to confess, if you are sincere, that reason 
and science have no part in your condition, and 
that your unbelief is the fruit of weakness and de- 
cay of every kind. Do not deceive yourself ; infi- 
delity is not an elevation, but a degradation ; it is a 
fall, it is a moral and intellectual decline ; and this 
decline in a young man who has been educated in 
the Christian Faith is usually brought about by the 
ruin of more faculties than one. Some young men 



250 Why Men do not Believe, or 

fall into infidelity in consequence of manifold low 
and degrading actions, which have extinguished 
their moral life. Many, thank God, descend not 
thus far ; they stop themselves on the sad incline. 
They lose the Faith by hostile teaching, by irreli- 
gious reading, by intercourse with indifferent or ad- 
verse companions, by the very atmosphere of infi- 
delity that surrounds them ; but though their soul 
may have undergone many falls, the moral life still 
animates it. La Bruyere said : " I would fain see 
a man who is sober, moderate, chaste, equitable, 
declare that there is no God ; he would at least 
speak disinterestedly ; but such a man is not to be 
found."* For my part, I would fain see a young 
man who is chaste, modest, humble, seriously in- 
structed in Christian doctrine, declare, that the 
Faith which he received from his mother the Catho- 
lic Church is without foundation : hitherto I have 
never met with such a young man. 

But what I have often seen, what we see every 
day, is this : men of ripe intellect, after years of 
wandering, return to the Faith and to the practices 
which it imposes, acknowledging and declaring, in 
all humility, that their unbelief was but the fruit of 
vanity, ignorance, or passion. It is a fact of daily 
observation that men regain the summits of faith 
by the pure and persevering love of truth and vir- 
tue, as they descend into the abyss of infidelity by 

* Les Caractkres, chap, xvi., " Des Esprits Forts." 



The Principal Causes of Infidelity. 251 

pursuing a contrary path. A pure and humble 
soul, loving truth and justice, opens of itself to the 
light of faith ; and the holier it is, the higher in the 
moral order, the greater its knowledge of God and 
of itself, the deeper and more lively will be its faith. 
Faith grows in direct proportion to the purity and 
moral light of the soul. This is a fact attested by 
the whole history of Christianity. I will conclude 
by recommending this fact to the consideration of 
all sincere men. 



FINIS, 



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